>Yes, we played it the way you did, we called it wireless telephone - what an avant-garde name!!

Brings fond memories of an old joke:
The French report they have found telephone cables in a geological layer so deep, that they claimed they had telephones 200 years ago.
Then the Russians claim they had dug even deeper and found optical cables, claiming they had internet 300 years ago.
Eventually, the guys from Montenegro dig even deeper and find nothing - and claim they had wireless 500 years ago.

>> "the history of beer is as old as the history of mankind" eventually translated into "if there was no beer, there would be no humanity".
>
>In this case, it could be because the final sentence could be true (in the sense that without beer the humanity could have disappeared), while the first is certainly false?

I don't care, as long as I get to live in this version of history where the final sentence is true. Writing SF or not, I don't like to imagine alternate realities where beer would not be.