Archaeologists in Ecuador have found evidence that chillies were used in cooking more than 6,000 years ago.
They say that chilli grains found in south-western Ecuador show they were cultivated for trade and cooking much earlier than previously thought.
The findings show it was people in this area who first added the spice to cooking and not those in the highlands of Peru or Mexico as first thought.
A wide variety of chili peppers were cultivated and used in cooking throughout the New World. Perry et al. (p. 986; see the Perspective by Knapp) identified a starch from chili peppers on ancient pottery and stone tools that is diagnostic of groups of chili species. The starches were found at various archaeological sites, including from about 6500 years ago in Ecuador, and suggest multiple domesticated chili species by about 4000 years ago.
Science 16 February 2007:
Vol. 315. no. 5814, p. 909
DOI: 10.1126/science.315.5814.909a
Starch Fossils and the Domestication and Dispersal of Chili Peppers (Capsicum spp. L.) in the Americas
Linda Perry,1 Ruth Dickau,2 Sonia Zarrillo,2 Irene Holst,3 Deborah M. Pearsall,4 Dolores R. Piperno,1,3 Mary Jane Berman,5 Richard G. Cooke,3 Kurt Rademaker,6 Anthony J. Ranere,7 J. Scott Raymond,2 Daniel H. Sandweiss,6,8 Franz Scaramelli,9 Kay Tarble,10 James A. Zeidler11
Chili peppers (Capsicum spp.) are widely cultivated food plants that arose in the Americas and are now incorporated into cuisines worldwide. Here, we report a genus-specific starch morphotype that provides a means to identify chili peppers from archaeological contexts and trace both their domestication and dispersal. These starch microfossils have been found at seven sites dating from 6000 years before present to European contact and ranging from the Bahamas to southern Peru. The starch grain assemblages demonstrate that maize and chilies occurred together as an ancient and widespread Neotropical plant food complex that predates pottery in some regions.
1 Archaeobiology Program, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Post Office Box 37012, Washington, DC 20013?7012, USA.
2 Department of Archaeology, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive, NW, Calgary, Alberta, T2N 1N4, Canada.
3 Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado Postal 0843?03092, Balboa, Republic of Panama.
4 Department of Anthropology, 107 Swallow Hall, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA.
5 Center for American and World Cultures, 105 MacMillan Hall, Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056, USA.
6 Climate Change Institute, University of Maine, 120 Alumni Hall, Orono, ME 04469?5773, USA.
7 Department of Anthropology, Temple University, 1115 West Berks Street, Philadelphia, PA 19122, USA.
8 Department of Anthropology, South Stevens 5773, University of Maine, Orono, ME 04469?5773, USA.
9 Centro de Antropolog?a, Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Cient?ficas, Carretera Panamericana, Kilometer 11, Altos de Pipe, Venezuela.
10 Departamento de Arqueolog?a, Etnohistoria y Ecolog?a Cultural, Escuela de Antropolog?a, Facultad de Ciencias Econ?micas y Sociales, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas 1041, Venezuela.
11 Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA.
