These clever physics toys from the past each demand at least a 10-minute educational youtube video of their mechanisms.

Sweet. I’m trying to learn more about medieval Arabic science, engineering and philosophy.

Check out https://muslimphilosophy.org. Better than Wikipedia IMO.

One has only to look at how many christians don't share all their worldy goods in common to understand that there are many, many muslims who are fond of alcohol.

Edit: eg https://www.efealkollu.com.tr/en/efe/

You've just reminded me about one of my mother's stories about her young adult life, travelling the world before she got married.

One place she stayed was a kibbutz in Israel, where she was served "don't worry it's kosher pork" by her host.

Now i'm curious for the earliest documented drinking game.

In Barber's Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years she mentions that proto-Indo-European language reconstructors are pretty sure that besides the usual set of animals and weather conditions, there was a PIE word root for "getting high". I'm guessing literacy (~3'400 BCE), not existence of drinking games (~4'000 BCE?), will be the major driver behind "earliest documented".

I could imagine hypothetical archeological evidence of drinking games without written words being involved.

The earliest limit might be earliest evidence of alcohol production, of course.

> The earliest limit might be earliest evidence of alcohol production, of course.

Natural fermentation of fruits has been occurring wild long before humans were around, for what it's worth.

Garret Ryan from Told in Stone has something on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k8R3Xe9eZQ

(Apopudobalia is an invention, but beer pong has an unbroken history from classical antiquity to the present day.)