ABSTRACT
Introduction At the dawn of civilization, humans recognized, probably by accident, that under certain circumstances, when raw foods from plant and animal sources were stored for future consumption, they could change to different but desirable products with longer storage stability. e possibility of such an event occurring might have been after they learned to produce more foods than they could consume immediately and thus needed storage. It was probably the period during which they learned agriculture and animal husbandry as well as making baskets and pottery to store the excess products. On this basis, one can assume that fermented food probably originated in approximately 7000 ..–8000 .. in the tropical areas of Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. Subsequently, other civilizations also produced fermented foods from different raw materials, particularly to preserve those that were seasonal and thus available in abundance only for a short harvesting period. Fermented milk products, alcoholic beverages from fruits and cereal grains, and leavened breads became popular among the early civilizations in the Middle East and in the Indus Valley and later among the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans.1
