This chimpanzee stumbles across a windfall of overripe plums.
Many of them have split open, drawing him to their intoxicating fruity odor.
He gorges himself and begins to experience some strange effects.
This unwitting ape has stumbled on a process that humans will eventually harness to create beer, wine, and other alcoholic drinks.
The sugars in overripe fruit attract microscopic organisms known as yeasts.
As the yeasts feed on the fruit sugars they produce a compound called ethanol — the type of alcohol in alcoholic beverages.
This process is called fermentation.
Nobody knows exactly when humans began to create fermented beverages.
The earliest known evidence comes from 7000 BCE in china, where residue in clay pots has revealed that people were making an alcoholic beverage from fermented rice, millet, grapes, and honey.
Within a few thousand years, cultures all over the world were fermenting their own drinks.
