> They observed that pickled vegetables preserved the veggies for months.
Kind of a tautology. Why would they think to pickle something in the first place?
Kind of a tautology. Why would they think to pickle something in the first place?
Probably something similar for pickling. Someone noticed that salted foods last a long time, and vinegar never seems to go bad, so why not try combining them?
Humans have lived at subsistence level, one bad harvest away from famine for most of history. Our modern abundance is very recent (1-3 generations) thing depending on where you were born.
So I think a tremendous amount of food discovery was a combination of food accidents didn't want food to go to waste, and desperation level eating anything to delay death from starvation.
Looking it up, ocean water has the right salt content to facilitate this...