Study Puts Fermented Foods, Not Fire, As Pivotal Moment In Human Brain Growth

Were cavemen partial to a bit of kimchi?

Fermented foods may have helped evolution of large brains in humans, according to a recent study.

The human brain began increasing in size around 2.5 million years ago. But scientists have been unsure of what mechanism drove that change. Fire and the invention of cooking has often been thought to have been the key, by enabling our ancestors to get enough nourishment to spur our evolution.

But the new study notes that the archaeological evidence shows that human brain expansion predated fire use by up a million years.

As brains need a lot of calories to keep functioning, the researchers believe another dietary change helped to kickstart the growth of early humans’ brains. They posit that fermented foods, as a dietary option accessible to our ancestors, were responsible.

External Fermentation Hypothesis

The researchers propose the External Fermentation Hypothesis to explain what helped our brains grow. Food ferments inside our guts, but the researchers believe that the food must have been fermented before being eaten.