Alcohol, specifically ethanol which is a colorless volatile flammable form of alcohol with the chemical formula C2H5OH that is the intoxicating agent in liquors and is also used as a solvent and in fuel, has been around for a huge chunk of human history & was used by human civilization for longer than most people would expect. It has been around for a very early portion of humanity's history and it is now that people are seriously considering the use of it as a renewable biofuel that could allow people to power vehicles and small buildings/homes in a sustainable manner.
Some early beer may have been made by Neolithic people in China nineteen thousand years ago, documenting one of the earliest recorded uses of people producing ethanol in what is considered human prehistory. Flammable forms of wine containing ethanol were also produced in Ancient Greece, but that did not immediately lead to ethanol being isolated into its base component. However, that started to change around the ninth century when Jabir ibn Hayyan found out that adding salt to boiling wine was able to enhance the relative volatility of the alcohol and produce vapors that could lead to the separation of gaseous alcohol from other liquids in the mix.
According to the book The Origins of Chemistry by Robert P. Multhauf, European chemists started also learning how to add salt to wine for distilling wine and getting ethanol from the wine. Soon, this process starting appearing in works that were written in the Latin language.
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