All cultures depend on creating, transforming, reaching a higher level of complexity. And there are no cultures in the world as long-lasting—and at the same time constantly evolving—as cultures of fermenting anaerobic bacteria.
Did fermentation create civilization? Yes. At least, it was there from the very beginning, going by the general premise that the symbolic “exit from the caves” and the associated development of cultivation occurred between 15,000 and 11,000 BCE. People were eating wild grains and the flours made from them, but they were also fermenting the grains. The phenomenon of “rising” bread emerged from the fermentation of wild yeast, but anthropologists agree that in several of the most important “cradles of civilization” (Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, and Mexico), beverages were the first things to be fermented. The earliest records come from the Middle East, from the times of the Natufian culture, named after the archaeological site in Wadi Natuf in what is now Palestine.
Researchers (Robert Dudley, Patrick E. McGovern, and Elisa Guerra-Doce, for example) have long suggested that Homo sapiens benefited from fermentation—our ancestors ate overripe wild fruits, so the alcohol contained in them must have been a familiar phenomenon. However, the validity of such claims is hard to prove—for one thing, the alcohol level in fermented fruit is too low to leave traces in the body. Hard evidence is required, preferably something that would confirm the purpose of human-engineered fermentation. And this evidence exists.
First Sips
In 1956, the Raqefet Cave was discovered in Mount Carmel. This find remains a reference point for anthropologists, paleontologists, paleobotanists, and palynologists studying ancient pollen. The breakthrough moment in research on the history of fermentation came in 2018, when the remains of a deliberately made product were found in the cave—alcohol-containing pulp made from fermented barley and wheat grains. It was located in a clay pot, near two mortars used for grinding grains. The discovery was dated to between 13,700 and 11,700 BCE, confirming existing theories about the production of alcohol by the Natufians. To establish whether fermentation was at play, the shapes of the molecules were examined. Wheat and barley starches take on different shapes depending on the processes they undergo. So, a team of researchers (Huan Liu, Zhenyao Wang, et al.) conducted an experiment: they subjected modern starches of these grains to various processes. During fermentation, the experimental starches took on a similar shape to the wheat and barley starches found in the cave. This was the origin of the thesis on the oldest documented beer production, which still holds today.
Claude Lévi-Strauss’ famous stance that the invention of mead was the turning point that marked man’s transition from the state of nature to a developed culture may require an update. However, although mead makers don’t have their own Wadi Natuf, it can be assumed that mead production is not much younger. Rock drawings depicting people collecting honey date back twelve thousand years, besides which the fermented honey drink is incredibly simple to make. One need only mix honey with water and wait patiently—the wild yeast present in the honey does the rest.
According to Patrick E. McGovern, an anthropologist from the University of Pennsylvania and researcher of the oldest traces and methods of alcohol fermentation, “our species’ intimate relationship with fermented beverages over millions of years has, in large measure, made us what we are today.” Mikal John Aasved, an anthropologist at the University of California, makes an even stronger claim in his famous doctoral thesis written in 1988 (published three years later) on alcohol and drinking in pre-industrial societies. He notes that all vertebrates can metabolize alcohol. Thus it is quite reasonable to conclude that alcohol (i.e., the product of fermentation) has always been known to humans. McGovern draws the same conclusion. “We would have been very deliberate about going at the right time of the year to collect grains, fruits, and tubers and making them into beverages at the beginning of the human race,” he said in an interview for Smithsonian magazine.
There is little question that alcohol was the first of the consciously obtained fermentation products. The beer-like pulp from Mount Carmel, probably fermented with natural yeast from the environment or directly from the air, appears to be a distant relative of the beer we drink today, and it still has many cousins around the world. Sandor Ellix Katz, the guru of modern fermentation—and author of probably the most respected books on the subject—has written about some of these related beverages. He points to Mexican tesgüino made of malted corn (a cooked, high-starch paste transformed into fermented syrup), sorghum beer (a thick, cloudy starch suspension very popular in Africa) along with the Sudanese version made of roasted sorghum (merissa), Nepalese tongba (made of millet), and even various Asian rice beers—all of which are essentially variants of the same process and similar technology. Often, as might be expected, these drinks have social functions. John G. Kennedy, who has been studying the northern Mexican Tarahumara population since the early 1950s, even claims that tesgüino is the main element of local social organization.
A few millennia after the brewers from Wadi-an-Natuf, in a slightly different place—somewhere between today’s Armenia, Georgia, and Iran—people realized that there were simpler methods of producing a fermented drink; moreover, it was even tastier than grainy starch pulp. Between 7000 and 5800 BCE, people began fermenting grapes. Artifacts from eight thousand years ago indicate the presence of tartar and grape seeds, most likely from fruits that were already (!) being farmed. The artifacts came from clay vessels, probably qvevri-style amphorae. This method of wine production was invented in Kakheti, Georgia, and involves fermenting whole bunches of grapes, including the skin and stalks. It has survived to this day, and over the last decade this “new fashion” has been conquering the wine world at the speed with which fermentation technology from the Caucasus and Elbrus spread around the Mediterranean basin. The social and cultural role of wine seems fairly clear. It is fair to say that Jewish and Christian liturgies (and the culture that migrated north with Christianity) are quite literally the fruit of fermentation.
The original characteristics of beer and wine, despite refinements and technological achievements such as filtration, are familiar today—as is the fermentation process in general, which relies on both yeasts and bacteria. Microorganisms are present everywhere and always have been, so fermentation is occurring continuously, regardless of location. Archeological finds have also pushed the boundaries of the conscious fermentation of food ingredients further and further back in time. While this evidence doesn’t reach as far back as discoveries about the fermentation of alcohol, it still confirms the original nature of the process in relation to food and the shaping of cultures.
Daily Bread and Cheese
Although bread has been around for millennia, baking with leavening agents appeared remarkably late, in the third century BCE. At some point, people in Egypt began leaving their dough out for a while before baking—and of course, it is the time factor that promotes fermentation. The resulting leavening agent made the bread fluffy, differentiating it from the brittle flatbreads familiar until then. Time, which is required to obtain the leaven and allow the bacteria to do their job, is precisely what the Jews fleeing from Egypt lacked, according to the Book of Exodus. It describes how they could not wait for the bread to rise, so they ate it unleavened, because the Angel of Death was passing through Egypt and they had to leave immediately. Although the scientific explanation of the chemical processes necessary in the production of leavened bread (and the description of the fermentation process based on yeast) were revealed only in the years 1857–1868 (Pasteur), it is clear that the authors of the Bible had a perfect understanding of the way microorganisms work and the role of time in fermentation. In fact, the process of making leavened bread has remained unchanged for nearly five thousand years.
Alongside grains and fruits, another basic ingredient of fermentation with a long history is milk. Drinking fresh milk is a twentieth-century custom tied to the universality and availability of cooling technology. Until very recently, only people who owned cows, goats, or sheep could enjoy this privilege. Others consumed fermented milk. Kumis (also called kimiz) is thought to be the oldest fermented milk drink. Herodotus noted that the Scythians produced it and that it was tasty. But the written history only goes back as far as the fifth century BCE. Fermented mare’s milk was certainly drunk much earlier in Central Asia, where it has also survived in the same form to this day. In those areas, which were poor in vegetation, lactic acid fermentation was often used. It was likely in the same region that yogurt was first made, between 5000 and 4000 BCE (although some believe it originated in China). But this is just a question of chronology. Similar ideas arose in other parts of the world. Some argue that the Greek oxygala (eaten with honey), of which Galen wrote in the second century CE, is a descendant of Central Asian yogurt. However, it is probable that the Greeks invented their product themselves, just like the ancient inhabitants of India (dahi curd), Egypt or Sudan (zabady yogurt), and the Balkans (trahana) invented theirs.
And from fermented milk to cheese—another product of fermentation known around the world. Essentially, sour milk is already halfway to curd cheese. It ferments “itself”—lactic acid fermentation is carried out by the bacteria present in the milk. The curdling of milk used to be a regular occurrence, and simple cheesemaking was the natural progression. The nomadic inhabitants of Central Asia went a step further in the production (also probably “unintentional”) of rennet cheese. As it happened, the wineskins they made from goat and sheep stomachs contained remains of both lactic acid and rennet. In any case, cheese was made in many places around the world in the Bronze Age, as evidenced by numerous archaeological finds.
Alcohol, bread, and milk are the original triad of fermentation. Even the oldest fermented products that formed the basis of Asian cuisines are much younger than these three. However, in this otherwise very orderly chronology there is one surprising, separate, and special case: fish. Ancient Roman garum and Asian fish sauce are the result of a ruthless-smelling process that takes many months.
But the origins of fish fermentation lie neither in the Mediterranean nor the South China Sea. In fact, it began in the Baltic Sea—or rather, a strait that became a lake and then disappeared. In 2016, a two-hundred-thousand-year-old collection of fish bones was discovered at the Norje Sunnansund archaeological site in southeastern Sweden. The people living in that area had found an ingenious way of fermenting minnows, carps, perches, pikes, eels, and burbots. Just like fish intended for garum or fish sauce, they were buried deep in the ground. But since neither salt nor clay was available, the fish were “pickled” by adding pine bark or seal fat and then wrapped in seal or wild boar skins and buried. This type of fermentation works well in cold climates. Norje Sunnansund dates back to 7600–6600 BCE. The tradition behind surströmming—Swedish fermented Baltic herring (which some airlines ban on board their aircraft)—is therefore much more ancient than Roman fish fermentation and obviously came long before the earliest references to surströmming in the sixteenth century.
When in Rome, When in Kyoto
Again, food fermentation is a process that occurs everywhere, with techniques developing independently in different places. The impact of live bacterial cultures on culinary culture (and culture in general) in various parts of the world is similar. However, the strongest connections between fermented food and the character of the cuisine are undoubtedly found in Rome and Japan.
It is generally agreed that around 300 BCE (that late!), probably in China, people began fermenting kōji mold, which soon became an ingredient of basic fermented soybean dishes. In turn, Roman garum—a salty sauce made of fermented fish—is the younger sibling of the Greek garos, which was mentioned in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE in the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Aristophanes. Both kōji, which rapidly spread across Japan along with the Chinese script, and garum, which went wherever the legionnaires went, had entire culinary cultures built around them. There are few Roman recipes that don’t feature garum. The sense of taste in that culture was shaped by the aromatic, salty-sour flavor of fish fermented into liquid form. Japanese cuisine, on the other hand, isn’t all about fresh fish, as we tend to think—it’s centered on the rounded, not overly intense umami flavor that comes directly from the fermentation of soy. Miso (some believe that an ancient miso based on fermented fish, acorns, or grains already existed in Japan at the end of the Neolithic period), natto, katsuobushi, shochu, mirin, and soy sauce are the foundations of Japanese cuisine. In a sense, everything else can be viewed as merely an addition to the fermented ingredients.
After the fall of Rome, garum also disappeared from the kitchen; European taste was built anew. Still, a trace of the Roman sauce has been preserved in one of the provinces of the empire: Worcestershire sauce, a British staple, which contains a fermented fish component. Meanwhile, Japanese cuisine, thanks to the archipelago’s long-term isolation, has survived almost intact, or at least with sources that can be easily traced.
A World of Cabbage
Although the Asian and European paths diverged in terms of fermentation and the processing of vegetables and fruits, there is one special case that connects continents, cultures, and eras. Moreover, it has retained its popularity over the millennia. Like the Swedish fish, it is a product of pickling. And the perfect vegetable for pickling, according to intercontinental and historical consensus, is cabbage. More broadly: Brassica, a genus of plants that includes cruciferous vegetables such as cauliflower, broccoli, kale, wild cabbage, kohlrabi, and
Cruciferous vegetables were of great importance and value in ancient times. In Egypt, cabbage was among the gifts offered to the gods. In Greece, the vegetable was celebrated for many centuries, with doctors and writers from Hippocrates (fifth century BCE) to Dioscorides (first century CE) and Galen (second century CE) extolling its virtues. Cabbage also charmed the Romans, who unanimously claimed that it was a cure for everything from joint pain and overdrinking to cancer. “It is the cabbage which surpasses all other vegetables,” noted Cato the Elder in De agri cultura. Pliny the Elder, in addition to conducting a careful taxonomic analysis of cabbage, cited monographs on the vegetable written by Greek authors, which have not survived to this day. Pliny also wrote about ways to preserve cabbage (although he was probably talking more specifically about kale). He recommended cutting it finely, putting it in oiled containers, adding Indian saltpeter (potassium nitrate) or seaweed, and closing tightly. And there we have it—a recipe for pickled cabbage.
So, sauerkraut is most likely a Roman invention. This is confirmed by Pliny’s contemporaries Dioscorides and Columella, who wrote expressly about the use of brine with brassicas, fennel, cucumbers, and olives. Ancient medicine saw sauerkraut as a miraculous remedy for everything, rightly predicting its probiotic properties, which began to be utilized so magnificently in Korean cuisine a millennium later, in the production of kimchi. However, long before the idea of adding spices and other vegetables to fermenting cabbage developed in Asia, the cabbage-based dish compositum appeared in Rome, its name indicating the inclusion of more than one element. This name survived for a very long time—Maria Dembińska, a researcher of Polish culinary culture, mentions “cabbage compositum” in the context of Jagiellonian cuisine [trans. note: the Jagiellonian dynasty ruled in Poland and nearby countries between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries CE]. Compositum is just a short step away from “compost.” And “kumpost” was the name for sauerkraut in the eleventh century Holy Roman Empire. In terms of the culture-forming role of this pickle, it is interesting to note how close the word for “cabbage” is to “kumpost” in various European languages.
In the thirteenth century, sauerkraut was common in German households, and its health benefits were highlighted in numerous treatises in the early modern period. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the French Le trésor de la santé expanded on this rhapsodizing with a rather detailed description of the production of sauerkraut. One hundred and fifty years later, the Scottish physician James Lind, trying to find a cure for scurvy—the one serious enemy of the British Navy—noted that the incidence of the disease was much lower among Dutch than English sailors. Since Britannia, which ruled the waves, was determined to address the issue of scurvy, Captain James Cook took James Lind and nearly eight hundred pounds of sauerkraut on his first voyage across the Pacific. None of the crew suffered from scurvy, and the captain—by process of elimination (many other products were taken onboard with the aim of preventing the disease)—proclaimed sauerkraut to have miraculous powers. “Sour Krout is Cabbage cut small, and cured by going through a state of fermentation (I am not acquainted with the proper method), it is afterward close pack’d in Casks with its own liquor, in which state it will keep any length of time,” Cook reported to the Admiralty. During subsequent cruises, he wrote paeans to sauerkraut in his diary. Although lemons ultimately became the mandatory antiscorbutic on English ships, Cook remained faithful to fermentation. Unfortunately, delivering sauerkraut to Hawaii during his last expedition to the Pacific didn’t save him from death (and cooking) at the hands of the locals.
There are few culinary processes more fashionable today than fermentation. Pickles are back in favor. Famous food writers have made their careers celebrating and teaching fermentation techniques, such as Sandor Katz, who draws on the multi-generational wisdom of the inhabitants of Central and Eastern Europe. Sharing sourdough starters or kombucha symbiotic cultures of bacteria and yeast (SCOBYs) is the done thing. Home brewing, cider production, and cheesemaking have become emblems of a prosperous lifestyle. In some places, miso and garum are fermented for months or years before being transformed into expensive attractions at traditional (or, rather, forward-looking) food fairs. Kefirs with fancy packaging dominate the shelves of exclusive delicatessens, and fresh pickled cucumbers, tightly sealed in cans, are a desirable souvenir from certain metropolises. Bacterial cultures are eternally alive and—in the long term, compared to ever-changing human cultures—immutable.
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