20 of the world's best soups

If a bowl of soup strikes you as the ultimate in comfort, you've got plenty of company. So here are 20 of the world's best soups -- from Mexico to Japan -- to fill stomach and soul.

(CNN) — If a steaming bowl of soup strikes you as the ultimate in old-fashioned comfort, you've got plenty of company. Soup is one of the world's oldest and most universal foods, said Janet Clarkson, author of the book "Soup: A Global History." "Every culture has some kind of soup," she said. "It's got very ancient roots." Early people simmered everything from turtle shells to lengths of bamboo in soup, she writes in the book, turning out metal soup pots starting in the Bronze Age. Boiling food made it possible to subsist on stable grains, with herbs and other ingredients added for nourishment or medicinal purposes.