People have been fermenting food since before the written word. Thanks to archaeological discoveries, we know that 13,000 years ago ancient Natufian culture in the Levant was fermenting grain into beer and that around the globe in Jiahu, Northern China, 9,000 years ago, a mixture of rice, honey and fruit was fermented to make early “wines”. In fact, most cultures have at some point in their history fermented plants into alcohol, from agave pulque in Mesoamerica to gum-tree way-a-linah in Australia. As to preserving food, archaeologists have found that nearly 10,000 years ago fish was fermented by the Mesolithic inhabitants of Sweden.