American chili peppers from 6,000 years agoResearchers report that across the Americas, chili peppers (Capsicum
species) were cultivated and traded as early as 6,000 years ago -
predating the invention of pottery in some areas of the Americas. The
researchers analyzed starch grains to trace the history of chili
peppers in the Americas.
When Europeans arrived in the Americas, chili peppers were among
the most widespread of the plants domesticated in the New World.
However, the chronology and precise geography of their origins and
early dispersals had been very poorly understood. Tropical
environments, where many chili varieties were first domesticated and
then incorporated into prehistoric farming systems, degrade most
organic archaeological remains.
Linda Perry of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington solved
the problem of decaying vegetable matter leaving scant evidence when
she found peppers could be identified from fossilised grains of
starch. Starch grains from chilli peppers were then found alongside
remnants of corn, yucca, squash, beans and palm fruit, suggesting
ancient recipes designed to make a taste more palatable. The starch
microfossils were found at seven sites dating from 6,000 years ago to
European contact and ranging from the Bahamas to southern Peru.
Cultivated chili starch grains are discernible from those of
wild chilies. The remains of these domesticated chili peppers were
often found with corn, forming part of a major, ancient food complex
that predates pottery in some regions. The oldest Capsicum starch
grains were found in southwestern Ecuador at two sites dating to
6,100 years ago. The chili remains were associated with previously
identified corn, achira, arrowroot, leren, yuca, squash, beans and
palm fruit, adding to the picture of an early, complex agricultural
system in that region.
In Panama, chilies occurred with corn and domesticated yams that
dated 5,600 years before present. Chilies were found at a site
occupied 6,000 years ago in the Peruvian Andes, with microscopic
remains of corn, arrowroot and possibly potato. In this case, the
chilies were identified as the species C. pubescens. The rocoto
pepper, a cultivar of this species, is still a staple in the Peruvian
diet. Newer sites in the Bahamas (1,000 ybp) and in Venezuela
(500-1,000 ybp) also yielded remains of both corn and chilies.
The research also advances techniques in "archaeobiology," a
discipline that fuses archaeology and, in this case, botany. "We
demonstrate that prehistoric people from the Bahamas to Peru were
using chilies in a variety of foods a long time ago. The peppers
would have enhanced the flavor of early cultivars such as maize and
manioc and may have contributed to their rapid spread after they were
domesticated," said co-author Dolores Piperno, Smithsonian scientist
at the National Museum of Natural History and at the Smithsonian
Tropical Research Institute in Panama.
It's impossible to identify with certainty the first spice ever
sprinkled on a roasting haunch or thrown in a stew-pot. But Wendy
Applequist, an ethnobotanist at the Missouri Botanical Garden, said
capers have been found at 10,000-year-old sites in Iran and Iraq;
coriander at a 8,500-year-old site in Israel; and fenugreek in
Syria's Tell Aswad, which is 9,000 years old. Whether these were
domesticated or wild is not known.
Sources: Nature.com (15 February 2007), ScienceDaily, The Independent
(16 February 2007), Post-Gazette.com (18 February 2007);
http://tinyurl.com/2ynkpyhttp://tinyurl.com/2naunghttp://tinyurl.com/2u6fluhttp://tinyurl.com/23k2uf