So, lets say that some aspring Greek scientist stumbles upon some distillation techniques and builds a still and the Greco-Roman world begins developing liquor. What might the impacts include? There's two many avenues of progress I see inherent in this scenario:
- An earlier understanding of various chemicals, pursuant to the ability to distill various compounds.
- More importantly, in the short term (in my opinion), is the economic benefit of liquor. Now, all edible crops can be refined into high value alcoholic beverages. Consider that most grain could not be exported very far by road, due to the low value and high volume of the goods (prices of any given quantity of grain doubled every 50 miles by road). Now, all the farmers have the opportunity to produce a much greater profit, as the crop itself is now more valuable and, more importantly, it is in a much more condensed package; something that can be exported much further economically.