Around 10 million years ago, one of our primate ancestors was searching for food on a forest floor.
This primate was one of the last common ancestors of humans, gorillas and chimpanzees—and it was slowly adapting to a new way of life, splitting its time between the trees and the ground.
And this lifestyle opened up all kinds of opportunities for finding food -- like scavenging fruits that had fallen from the trees.
But some of these new foods could hold some surprises.
Once they landed on the ground, the fruits often acquired a little kick.
This happened through the process of fermentation.
Bacteria or yeast got into the fruit and started feasting, converting the fruit's carbohydrates into new chemicals, including ethanol - a kind of alcohol.
But thanks to a recent adaptation, instead of getting sick from the boozy, fermented fruits, that primate could digest them safely, and get more calories at the same time.
This new superpower would open up a whole new nutritional landscape for us: fermented foods.
It took millions of years for hominins to go from enjoying nature's own fruit punch to making things like kimchi and beer.
