SWEDEN: Osteologists studying a 9,000-year-old lakeside site believe they have found the earliest known example of an important method of food preservation. Below an area thick with fish bones they found a 10-foot-long pit surrounded by postholes. Evidence led them to conclude that these early Mesolithic people were fermenting fish 1,500 years before fermentation was used anywhere else in the world—to make wine. This suggests people may have formed settlements here 3,000 years earlier than previously thought. Surströmming, anyone? —Samir S. Patel