It was black pepper, primarily, that inspired almost all of mans great explorations in the Middle Ages, including the discovery of America. Black pepper started America’s invest the Orient and played a vital role in the early days of the United States. On June 23, 1672, the first colonial American took an engaged part in spice trading: Boston-born Elihu Yale, later to offer his name and wealth towards the renowned University, come to Madras, India, as a clerk with the British East India Company. There he established contacts upon which he built a lot in spices. In 1780, Jonathan Carnes broke Europe’s spice monopoly by dealing directly using the East Indies and bringing a shipload of pepper returning to Salem, Massachusetts. From 1799 to 1846, pepper, worth millions of dollars, was delivered to Salem by daring Yankee skippers who founded America’s merchant marine.
Pepper comes from the dried berry (termed as a peppercorn) of a woody, climbing vine. Its scientific name is Piper nigrum L. There is no relation to the pod peppers that provide us sweet red and green peppers and the hot capsicum peppers (chili). When Columbus dropped anchor within the New World in search of spices, he discovered chili peppers making at least two mistakes we still accept. Thinking he was in India, he called indians Indians. He also named chilies peppers, thinking we were holding related to black pepper, Piper Nigrum, they will are not. The family of chili peppers is named Capsicum.
In the pre-Columbian tribes of Panama, the Shaman (spiritual medium) used Capsicum in conjunction with cacao and tobacco to enter into hallucinatory trances, in order to travel to celebrities or to the underworld. Today, the Cuna Indians of Panama burn capsicum hence the irritating smoke will chase away evil spirits throughout a girl’s puberty ceremony. They also trail a string of capsicum behind their canoes to discourage sharks from attacking, thus providing the earliest insight into the possible use of capsicum being a shark repellent.
In southern Mexico as well as the Yucatan Peninsula, capsicums have been part of the human diet since about 7500 B.C. and thus their use predates the 2 great central American civilizations, the Mayas along with the Aztecs. From their original use as a spice collected within the wild, capsicums gained importance after their domestication, and were a significant food when the Olmec culture was developing around 1000 B.C. By the time the Mayas reached the peak of their civilization in southern Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula, around A.D. 500, they’d a highly developed system of agriculture. Perhaps up to thirty different types of Capsicum were cultivated.
The American wild chili peppers probably originated in present-day Bolivia by means of birds dispersing the seeds, and finally spread throughout Central and South America. Chilies were a dominant a part of early American diets. The archaeological record at Tehuacan, Mexico southeast of Mexico City, implies that wild peppers were eaten in Meso-America a minimum of as far back as 7000 B.C., and were probably domesticated by 2500 B.C. On the Incas, chili peppers were among the four brothers with the creation myth, Agar-Uchu or Brother Chili Pepper.
Chilies were discovered when the Spanish explorers came to the Caribbean. In the islands over New World they found little red-colored vegetable pods that this natives used in cooking and which imparted a clear bite to food. Peter Martyr, who found America with Columbus in 1493, wrote, There are innumerable kinds of Agi (the Indian good name for pod peppers), the variety whereof is known by their leaves and flowers. Some were red, some yellow, some violet, some brown, some white. These folks were of all shapes and sizes. The sole aromatic plants Columbus based in the Western World however, were capsicums: plenty of Aji, (capsicum pepper), which is more valuable than pepper, and allspice or pimenta, a tree whose leaf had the best smell of cloves that I ever met with, thus wrote Dr. Diego Chanca of Columbus expedition. For additional information relating to capsicum extract go to: Capsicum to find out more.
The podded Capsicum family proved to be extremely adaptable in the event the explorers sent seeds back to Europe. In an amazingly short period of time, the cultivation of Capsicum pods spread to just about every part of the world. Moreover, in numerous places the pods developed different characteristics pertaining to shape, color, size and pungency.
The arrival of capsicum through the New World coincided with the invasion of the Ottoman Turks and resulted in their spread throughout Central Europe. The armies of Suleyman the Magnificent conquered Syria and Egypt in 1516-17, Yugoslavia in 1521, and Hungary in 1526. 4 seasons 1526 is the date usually given for your introduction of the capsicum generally known as paprika into Hungary by the Turks. In this invasion a new crop was shown the land of the Magyars. The Turks called it Turkish Pepper, the Hungarians named it paparka, a variation on the Bulgarian piperka, which in turn was derived from the Latin piper, for pepper. The brilliant red powder we realize as paprika comes from the dried pods (fruit) in the plant species Capsicum annuum L. As a result, it is part of a botanical group that ranges in the sweet Bell peppers we eat as a vegetable to the very hottest of chilies.