RichD wrote:
> It's easy to imagine the accidental discovery of beer
> and wine, maybe 10000 years ago. Grain ferments
> naturally. We might speculate this was the genesis
> of agriculture - the cavemen wanted a stable supply of barley.
>
> But I was wondering about distilled liquor - it's a
> sophisticated, nonintuitive process. This must have
> appeared much later.
>
> Anybody have any ideas when/where/how distillation
> was invented/discovered? What are the earliest records?

The Wikipedia article seems fairly well sourced to me, and jibes with
what I know of the history of Alchemy. Certainly, the Islamic scientist
Geber is widely credited with the development of "scientific"
distillation, and the name alcohol itself reveals its Islamic origins
(from Arabic al-kuhl, meaning "spirits" or something like that).

Mark Lipton
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