^{Culture Shift}

Asimov Press | Mar 20, 2026

Another argument for an earlier origin for fermented foods is that they are found across nearly all human cultures. While the number of fermented foods in the modern, Western diet is fairly limited (cheese, yogurt, bread, chocolate, coffee, beer, wine, kimchi, and kombucha) hundreds more are eaten around the world, from fermented shark in Greenland to a seemingly limitless variety of fermented soy beans in Asia. This diversity is a testament to how humans gradually mastered this ancient practice and modified it to suit new environments as they moved out of Africa.

The fossil record shows that a major shift in hominid anatomy occurred around 2 million years ago, when hominids developed a smaller rib cage and larger skull. At the same time, another major change took place in their intestines. Compared to our closest relatives, humans have a digestive tract that is 40 percent shorter. This decrease was thought to be driven by the external processing of our food, which reduced the time and energy involved in chewing and digesting. Anthropologist Richard Wrangham argues that the technological innovations of controlling fire and cooking food led to this major change, and that the excess energy we got from cooked food, in turn, supported the evolution of a larger brain.

However, two recent studies, by biological anthropologist Katie Amato in 2021 and evolutionary biologist Erin Hecht in 2023, suggest that these anatomical changes may have been driven by human use of fermentation even before humans began to cook. By allowing microbial species to ferment and break down complex carbohydrates and other macromolecules in foods, we may have turned over certain parts of an otherwise energy-intensive digestive process to microbes in a form of “external digestion.” This use of fermentation to pre-digest food, intentional or not, may have served as a predecessor to cooking, providing the extra calories needed to support the evolution of a larger brain.

Kurdish-Iranian militias seeking the end of the Islamic Republic

Natalia Sancha | El Pais | Mar 24, 2026

They have been waiting 47 years for the fall of the ayatollahs’ regime to build an Iranian Kurdistan. They say they are training their men and women to take advantage of this unique historical window, and, although they are the only Iranian troops stationed on the border with Iran, they claim they have received no tangible support or concrete proposal from either of the two allied powers — the United States and Israel — since they launched their joint offensive last month. Up to now, they have only attracted the wrath of Iranian artillery and, in doing so, agitated their host: the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which provides the salaries and permits for their fighters on Iraqi soil.

“We have very good relations with the KRG, which is why we can’t expose them or the civilian population to further Iranian attacks on their territory because of our presence,” explains Baba Sheikh Husseini, leader of the Khabat group — also a member of the opposition coalition against Tehran. He speaks from a safe house where he has just moved after burying two of his men killed in Iranian attacks on their bases.