CHILLI PEPPER HISTORY
If you ever enjoy hot sauce or eating cuisine that bites back leaving you with mixed feelings of pleasure with enriching tones of flavors but eye watering and mouth blistering pain. Then by now you must know that the key ingredient to spicy food comes from the commonly known hot peppers or chilli peppers. What are chilli peppers to be exact? They are simply as follows: Chilli peppers are a subfamily of plants that produce fruit that contain capsicum, classified by chemists as capsaicinoids. This chemical in chilli peppers can cause pain in mammals. The botanical name for chilli peppers is Capsicum and they come from the plant family Solanaceae. They are more commonly known as the nightshade family. Other nightshades such as eggplants, potatoes and tomatoes exist in this family. Where did chilli peppers originate from, you might be wondering? How did we get to this point in time when spicy is so high in demand and has become so popular with the whole world globally? It just so happens all those questions and more will be resolved as we uncover them all in CHILLI PEPPER HISTORY.
South America
Earliest Documentation of the Home of the WILD ChilLi Pepper
Understanding the Origins of Chili Peppers
While many may associate chilli peppers primarily with the vibrant culinary traditions of Mexico, the journey of these flavorful fruits begins much earlier in South America. The wild ancestors of chilli peppers have a rich history that predates their domestication in Mexico by thousands of years. Archaeological findings shed light on the significance of these early peppers, revealing a fascinating narrative of their use and cultural importance among ancient societies. In South America, archeological and genetic evidence from microfossil remains identified starch grains of Capsicum on milling stones and cooking pots going as far back as 6,000 BCE. These are some of the earliest chilli peppers documented from the region. Current archaeobotanical data for chilli pepper is mainly based on macro remains, plant remains recovered from archeological sites. A paleoethnobotanist at the University of Missouri-Columbia found fossil evidence in seven archeological sites that showed people were eating chili peppers as long as 6,000 years ago. This makes it one of the oldest known plants in the Americas or possibly the oldest spice. In a historical context with chronology perspective, this predates major civilizations such Roman Empire, Egyptian Empire, Chinese Empire, even before the Babylonian Empire!
“Before our research, there wasn’t much archeological evidence to show that prehistoric people in Central and South America were eating domesticated chili peppers,” said Deborah Pearsall, professor of anthropology in MU’s College of Arts and Science. “Chili peppers don’t preserve well because when you cook with them, you eat most of them; you don’t have husks or shells that are thrown away and preserved. That’s why we used a technique that involved analyzing microscopic starch grains on cooking and grinding tools to find this new evidence.”
Pearsall, who studied tools from sites, teamed with a group of scientists researching various locations in Central and South America. The project was led by Linda Perry, a research associate at the Smithsonian National Museum of Nature History's Archeology Program. Perry discovered an unknown microfossil starch grain while doing research and when the other researchers compared notes, they realized that their work revealed the same unknown starch grain. After studying the starches of many domesticated and wild plants, Perry determined that the mystery starch was a chilli pepper. "We knew from historic and ethnographic records that people were eating domesticated chili peppers, but this archeological evidence confirms those findings. It also shows us that chili peppers are one of the oldest food sources in the Americas and that people in distant areas all ate them. This suggests that these groups might have had some type of contact with each other," Pearsall said. By analyzing the grains on cooking tools, they were able to determine that people used the same grinding stones to grind corn, chilli peppers, and cassava, and they combined these ingredients to make soups, stews, and other dishes.
Documented evidence suggests that wild chili peppers originated in South America and later spread to Mesoamerica and beyond, supported by a combination of archaeological findings, genetic studies, and historical records. Genetic studies indicate that the domestication of Capsicum species began in South America, particularly in the Amazon region. A study published in Nature highlights that "the most genetically diverse populations of wild chili peppers are found in South America," lending acceptance to the idea of their origin there (Bassi et al., 2015). Over time, these wild varieties were cultivated and eventually spread northward into Mesoamerica. Archaeological evidence shows excavations have uncovered ancient chili pepper remains at various sites across South America dating back thousands of years. For instance, findings in Peru suggest the presence of Capsicum annuum, a domesticated chili pepper, around 6000 BCE (Pearsall et al., 2004). Additionally, remnants of chili peppers found in Mesoamerican sites indicate their use and cultivation by ancient cultures, supporting a migration pattern from south to north. Historical context from early explorers and indigenous records show the significance of chili peppers in both South American and Mesoamerican cultures. These records often reference trade networks that facilitated the exchange of agricultural products, including chilli peppers, across regions (Bassi et al., 2015).
Plant domestication studies reveal that the transition from wild to cultivated species of chili peppers occurred in distinct regions. Research indicates that early agricultural societies in South America played a crucial role in this process, with evidence suggesting that the use of wild chili peppers predates their domestication in Mesoamerica (Bassi et al., 2015; Perry & Pearsall, 2015). In conclusion, the convergence of genetic studies, archaeological findings, and historical records substantiates that wild chili peppers originated in South America and gradually spread northward into Mesoamerica and beyond. Contemporary research indicates that the indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica were the first to cultivate and utilize domesticated chili peppers, long before other nations and civilizations outside the Americas became aware of their existence or had access to them. It was only after Christopher Columbus's voyages in the late 15th century (specifically around 1492) that chilli peppers began to be introduced to Europe and other parts of the world, marking their first appearance outside of the Americas.
Indigenous Civilizations
Throughout the Ages
By following the chronological order from the earliest to the latest, this timeline shows the enduring cultural and proof importance of chilli peppers across these societies, illustrating a history deeply intertwined with the rich chilli pepper biodiversity of the Americas. This timeline highlights interactions between Indigenous civilizations of South America and wild chilli peppers, emphasizing their roles in agriculture, trade, and cultural practices. Although direct archaeological evidence of chilli cultivation by all of these groups, genetic studies and historical findings suggest that various Capsicum species were prevalent in the regions they inhabited. These civilizations, known for their advanced environmental stewardship and innovative agricultural techniques, encountered and utilized wild chili varieties, integrating them into their diets, medicinal remedies, and trade systems. The adaptability of chilli across diverse ecological landscapes suggests an exchange of knowledge and resources, which played a vital role in their diffusion throughout the continent. This list is based solely on agricultural deductive reasoning regarding why specific groups were selected. It encompasses civilizations from South America, Mexico, Mesoamerica, and Central America, highlighting their substantial contributions to the domestication, cultivation, and distribution of both wild and cultivated chili peppers. Historical Evidence: Environmental Knowledge: Cultural Practices: Trade Networks:
Timeline of Indigenous Civilizations
South America
Valdivia Culture (circa 3500 BCE – 1500 BCE)
Location: Coastal Ecuador
Relevance to Wild Chili Peppers: Potential interaction with wild chili peppers due to their coastal and agricultural lifestyle.San Agustín Culture (circa 3300 BCE – 1500 CE)
Location: Southern Colombia
Relevance to Wild Chili Peppers: Engaged with various native plants, possibly including wild Capsicum species.Caral Civilization (circa 3000 BCE – 1800 BCE)
Location: Coastal Peru
Relevance to Wild Chili Peppers: Advanced agricultural systems likely included wild Capsicum species.Chavín Civilization (circa 900 BCE – 200 BCE)
Location: Northern Andes, Peru
Relevance to Chili Peppers: Agricultural techniques likely utilized Capsicum species.Nazca Civilization (circa 100 BCE – 800 CE)
Location: Southern Peru
Relevance to Chili Peppers: Known for advanced agricultural techniques, although direct evidence of chili pepper use is sparse.Moche Civilization (circa 100 CE – 700 CE)
Location: Northern Peru
Relevance to Chili Peppers: Art and agriculture suggest potential chili pepper cultivation.Zenú (Sinú) (circa 200 CE – 1600 CE)
Location: Sinú and San Jorge river valleys, Colombia
Relevance to Chili Peppers: Masters of irrigation and agriculture, likely involved in chili pepper cultivation or trade.Tiwanaku Civilization (circa 300 CE – 1000 CE)
Location: Near Lake Titicaca, Bolivia
Relevance to Chili Peppers: Agricultural systems likely included Capsicum species.Tairona (circa 500 CE – 1600 CE)
Location: Northern Colombia, Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta
Relevance to Chili Peppers: Chili peppers were likely part of their food and medicinal practices.Wari Civilization (circa 500 CE – 1000 CE)
Location: Central Peru
Relevance to Chili Peppers: Known for terrace farming, likely cultivated Capsicum species.Muisca (Chibcha) Confederation (circa 600 CE – 1600 CE)
Location: Central Colombia
Relevance to Chili Peppers: Likely traded Capsicum species with neighboring regions.Quimbaya (circa 1000 CE – 1600 CE)
Location: Cauca River Valley, Colombia
Relevance to Chili Peppers: Inhabited fertile agricultural regions, possibly cultivating or trading chili peppers.Arawak (circa 1000 CE – 1600 CE)
Location: Northern Colombia and the Caribbean
Relevance to Chili Peppers: Widely used chili peppers, likely spreading knowledge of them through trade.Tucanoan Peoples (circa 1000 CE – present)
Location: Amazon rainforest, southeastern Colombia
Relevance to Chili Peppers: Lived in areas where wild Capsicum species were native, likely using them for food and rituals.Emberá (circa 1000 CE – present)
Location: Western Colombia
Relevance to Chili Peppers: Resided in tropical rainforests with access to wild chili peppers for cooking or medicine.Kogi (Kággaba) (circa 500 CE – present)
Location: Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta
Relevance to Chili Peppers: Descendants of the Tairona with deep knowledge of native plants, including chili peppers.Inca Empire (circa 1438 CE – 1533 CE)
Location: Andes (Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Colombia)
Relevance to Chili Peppers: The Inca extensively cultivated chili peppers and integrated them into their diet and rituals.
Mesoamerica
Tehuacán Valley Civilization (circa 5000 BCE – 2000 BCE)
Location: Puebla, Mexico
Relevance to Chili Peppers: This valley is one of the earliest sites of chili pepper domestication, with wild Capsicum annuum being used.Oaxaca Valley Culture (circa 2500 BCE – 1500 BCE)
Location: Oaxaca, Mexico
Relevance to Chili Peppers: Likely early cultivators of chili peppers alongside maize.Olmec Civilization (circa 1500 BCE – 400 BCE)
Location: Southern Mexico (Veracruz, Tabasco)
Relevance to Chili Peppers: The Olmecs likely played a significant role in the spread of domesticated chili peppers through trade and agricultural innovations.Zapotec Civilization (circa 700 BCE – 1521 CE)
Location: Oaxaca, Mexico
Relevance to Chili Peppers: Renowned for their agricultural practices, likely cultivated chili peppers.Maya Civilization (circa 2000 BCE – 1500 CE)
Location: Southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize
Relevance to Chili Peppers: Chili peppers were a key part of Mayan cuisine, medicine, and rituals.Mixtec Civilization (circa 1500 BCE – 1521 CE)
Location: Oaxaca, Guerrero, Puebla
Relevance to Chili Peppers: Cultivated chili peppers and were involved in their trade.Toltec Civilization (circa 900 CE – 1150 CE)
Location: Central Mexico
Relevance to Chili Peppers: Continued agricultural traditions from earlier Mesoamerican civilizations, including chili pepper cultivation.Aztec Empire (circa 1345 CE – 1521 CE)
Location: Central Mexico
Relevance to Chili Peppers: The Aztecs extensively cultivated and used chili peppers for cooking, medicine, and religious ceremonies.
Central America
Chorotega Culture (circa 1000 CE – 1500 CE)
Location: Nicaragua and Costa Rica
Relevance to Chili Peppers: Likely interacted with both wild and cultivated chili peppers, using them in food and trade.Lenca Culture (circa 1000 CE – 1500 CE)
Location: Honduras and El Salvador
Relevance to Chili Peppers: Chili peppers were likely part of their agricultural and culinary practices.
OLMECS
Pioneers of Mesoamerican Agriculture
You may be wondering, who are the Olmecs? In the late 1850s, a farmer was clearing land near the village of La Venta in southern Mexico when he found a rock sculpture nearly six-foot-tall. This was first evidence of the ancient Olmec civilization. However, at the time of this discovery there was not a proper name for this civilization due to a lack of archeological evidence. To this day, there is still a lot of mystery around the Olmec civilization.“Olmecatl” was was the name the Nahuatl Aztecs used which meant “inhabitants of the rubber country”. As a result, scholars came up with the name "Olmec" in reference to the rubber production in the area where many of the artifacts have been found. The connection between rubber balls and trees is an empirical observation. The Olmecs would grow rubber trees and harvest them to make a variety of things, one of them being rubber balls for a ritualistic ball game. Mayans played this same game called pitz in Classical Maya. When the Aztecs played the game in their language, Nahuatl, they called the game ōllamaliztli. The Olmec civilization is what is known as an archeological culture; a recurring assemblage of types of artifacts, buildings, and monuments from a specific period and region that may constitute the material culture remains of a particular past human society. Archeologists have found evidence of courts for playing and stadiums for watching these games throughout the region. The Olmecs were believed to be the earliest civilization in Mesoamerica. “Meso” means middle (Middle America) as in the geographical area which extends from central Mexico down through Central America. The Olmecs lived in a swampy region with no large rocks in the area and the nearest source of stone was from mountains more than one hundred miles away. Olmec workers somehow transported large basalt boulders through dense jungles and across major rivers without the use of the wheel and back to their swampy location. The Olmecs would sculpt colossal heads that were 3.8 to 11.2 ft high. Olmecs are a pristine civilization, many historians consider the Olmec civilization to be the “mother culture” of all future Mesoamerica cultures. The mother culture is a term for an earlier people's culture that has a great and widespread influence on some later cultures and people. Though the Olmecs did not exist for long, many of the works that they produced would later on be adapted and go onto influencing other cultures and empires in Mesoamerica. Some influential aspects of Olmec culture were their art, religion, architecture, trade routes, engineering, astronomy, sports, glyphic writing, mathematics, calendar, food such as chocolate and popcorn, and most importantly farming, including the cultivation of the chilli pepper. All these would later be adopted by civilizations such as the Zapotec, Maya, Toltec, Mixtecas, Teotihuacan, Mexicas (Mexico remained under Spanish rule until 1821 C.E. The people and culture we know as “Aztec” (referred to themselves as the Mexica), Tarascan, Tlaxcala, Chibcha, and Inca.
The Olmecs developed advanced agriculture civilization despite it being in harsh overgrown jungle environments. As such, the Olmecs developed an advanced irrigation system for their crops that needed to compete against the wild overgrown vegetation of the region. The Olmecs practiced a technique known as the "slash-and-burn", in which overgrown plots of land are burned. This clears them for planting and the ashes act as fertilizer. The Olmecs preferred to make settlements near water, as the floodplains were good for agriculture. Land farmed by the Olmecs were prone to flooding so the Olmec farmers built their houses on artificial hill so not obstruct the incoming floods which brought silt and mud, which made the land fertile. They planted many of the same crops seen in the region today, such as squash, beans, cassava, potatoes, corn and tomatoes. Among those crops was chilli pepper because of its many uses and its importance in their day-to-day life. Despite the Olmecs only having Stone Age technology, they were able to make tools that made their life easier. They were highly skilled at making pottery, clay pots and vessels were extremely common among the Olmec. These pots would become vessels and plates used for storing and cooking food. There was so much to be found that literally, millions of potsherds have been discovered in and around Olmec sites. The tools were mostly made of stone and basic items such as hammers, wedges, mortar-and-pestles, and mano-and-metate grinders used for mashing corn and other grains but most definitely used to crush peppers for culinary uses.
SINS OF SPICE
THROUGHOUT
HUMAN HISTORY
If you control the spice, you can control the world
When it comes to cooking or enjoying food, spices make all the difference as they will always have an important impact throughout human history and have at certain points led to changes in society. The search for spices and profiting from them would later fuel the need for an economic model that would fundamentally change the world. Learn more about it in the Spice Wars. In fact, lives were lost over the control of spices, resulting in systemic genocide, colonization and which all rely on slavery. European monarchs backed expeditions that eventually resulted in the colonization of North and South America. The revealing of the location of the Americas to the rest of the world ultimately had tragic consequences towards indigenous people of these South, Central, Mesoamerica Civilizations. Slavery was used to maintain these colonies. The indigenous people had already been nearly wiped out by the diseases from the Europeans, so the colonizers turned to Africa to find cheaper labor in the form of slaves that already had built up immunity to European diseases. The Dutch East India Company carried on economic warfare against Spain and Portugal by striking at their colonies in the West Indies and South America and on the west coast of Africa. Dutch East India Company was a private company, a stockholder-funded corporation. There was also the British East India Company that would compete with other companies. These were the first international capitalistic enterprises throughout the early years that would transform and reshape the economic world. Sparking wars, violence, colonization, systemic genocide, the usage of the slave trade was enable by the rich that demand spices. People would cross endless deserts and seas to transport spices from one country to the end of another. The drive for spices created the exchange of goods and in some cases currency which was the spices themselves. This created cultural clashes and interaction across entire world. Much of the history about spices and the significant roles spices have in human evolution have been forgotten and lost due to the passage of time.
One might wonder who could get behind eating chilli peppers because of their pungency followed by their pain. Not all spices are painful but you may wonder why our early ancestors went to such extremes to seek out these spices in the first place. In short, it comes down to geography because it plays in both the growing and usage of spices in food. The main use of spices was never about consumption in the first place, it was about survival and power. The first thing you should understand is that spices are toxins that plants use as defense; spices are defense. The same way predation of smaller animals by carnivores forces herbivore animals to develop and evolve some defenses against the ones that will kill them and eat them for substance. Just like animals, plants also do the same against herbivores to survive. All organisms exist at the cost of another life, all organisms are sentient and sapient, plants don’t want to be eaten the same way animals don’t want to be eaten. All living things strive for survival and reproduction of their species. You have to fight back if you want to survive and all plants fight back in their unique way. Plants grow high off the ground or have thick skin that is bark or grow sharp thorns but commonly plants use toxic chemicals which are usually stored up in large amounts in their bodies. If they happen to be eaten by herbivores it either kills them or injures them badly enough that they think twice about eating that plant again. Plants will store up poisons in their bodies to deter herbivores, but plants also have even smaller combatants to worry about, bacteria and fungi. What is poisonous to one organism might be food to humans; plant poisons are the spices for our early humans. Now how does most organic matter break down and in this case food? The short answer is microorganisms. Bacteria and fungus land on food and break it down using chemical methods. They also multiply, often rapidly, and increase the pace of how fast food will break down and start to decay. To survive you had to be able to ingest spice. When humans started eating these plant toxins there must have been casualties along the way in human evolution. Those who became resilient passed down those genes making humanity built to handle spice tolerance. Then humans decided to take it up another notch. Humans were capable of surviving when they ate plants. Humans were herbivores and adapted to eating an array of vegetation but something also happened along the way. Two million BCE our early ancestors' diets were changing, that shift was towards meat and that transition led to the result of many benefits. For instance smaller intestinal tracts but also importantly it led to the development of bigger brains. Fatty juicy meats have a ton of calories when compared to plant-based foods, depending on the amount of protein and fat. Lower fat meats have fewer calories and to meet the daily calorie needs of just meat, most people would only need to eat between 1 and 2lbs of meat per day. If a group of humans manages to take down a massive size beast, they would be eating well for days. Any type of meat has more calories than virtually any type of plant, as long as the serving sizes weigh the same. This means that if you eat the same amount of each by weight, you'll get more energy or calories from eating meat than you will get from eating vegetables. It was easier perhaps to some humans to eat one pound of cook meat than consuming enough raw plants to add up to that many calories that the one pound of meat provided. The change of diet helped with bigger brain development mainly because big brains require extra calories, any extra calories combined from hunting and gathering both meat and plants was potentially what was required to help create healthy brain development. From humble apes to modern-day humans, the brain has changed because of meat-eating.
However, hunting for meat was not always as successful compared to gathering and foraging for plants. The challenge to attain meat would prove to be very difficult without access to tools or weapons. Humans were never designed from an evolutionary perspective to be meat-eating hunters. Go ahead, try to take down a deer with your bare hands and teeth, let's see if you can manage it with your bite force alone, could even the strongest human in the world win against an average animal of the same size pound per pound. The chance of that happening is very unlikely. The reason humans will never become scary and impressive predatory in physique with claws or bite strength is that the species of human didn’t evolve physically to become capable in that sense, they did evolve to be vastly intelligent and gaining the ability to sweat, we were built for long endurance to out run or chase prey. All these factors help the human species to survive and reproduce while spreading its spice tolerance to future generations to get the upper hand on anything in the food web. Meat and spices help kick start humanity from hunting to gathering to cultivation and thus creating civilizations. Since the meat doesn’t stay fresh for very long, decomposition was a massive problem but our ancestors discovered ways to preserve food. Meat is a precious necessity and its scarcity would only create urgency for the need to develop different ways of storage to keep meat fresh for sanitary reasons. Now the approach to storing meat is going to be different depending geographically where you are on the planet and what resources are available around you. The metabolism rates of bacteria determine how long food will last. Colder climates make it much easier to deter food rot because bacteria can't grow as fast in colder temperatures. Microorganisms like bacteria require oxygen and water to break down food. All food has some level of water inside them that bacteria can take advantage of but fortunately, in Northern colder climates, the air holds less water thus giving bacteria less to work with to break down matter. If you were to travel to the tropics where heat and moisture levels are at the highest, food doesn’t last very long because bacteria reproduce faster in these zones. Throughout the world, techniques for storing meat include smoking meat or using salt, these practices both dehydrate as well create a protective layer that prevents bacteria from growing. Spices like the chilli pepper have antimicrobial properties which would help prevent the growth of bacteria and also would hide the taste of food that has started to turn bad. Using the capsicum that peppers contain is vital in the tropics where bacteria growth is at the highest on the planet. Lots of spices were being used to counteract the food decay in the tropics vs empires in the northern regions. This could explain why cuisine in Northern climates uses a lot less variety of spices resulting in not having renowned dishes with chilli pepper. It is why so many Europeans valued spices so much and sailed oceans and traveled deserts making trade routes all over the world looking for access to these species. From a geographic, evolutionary, and biological standpoint, all the animals, fungi, bacteria would lead to the development of spices thus creating a larger array of naturally occurring species on the equator or tropic regions.
WHEN WORDS COLLIDE
How a spicy fruit was renamed and dubbed “chilli pepper”
The wealthiest of European societies wanted spices because it was one way to flex their wealth and status in their social circles. Just like in many parts of the world, the simplest spices were used in some cases as currency or status symbols in some societies. Even among the Mesoamerica Empires they also understood the many uses of spice and had similarities in commerce; chilli was used in forms of tribute or currency which can be learned about in the codex.
The Aztecs had their name for the spicy fruit, this is supported by historiography depicting the fruit in the Codex. In the “Codex Mendoza," Natives from Mesoamerica and Spaniards created a transcultural Aztec manuscript. It contains traditional Aztec pictograms with Spanish explanations and commentary of the history of the Aztec rulers and their conquests, the founding of the fabled city of Tenochtitlan, a list of the tribute paid by the conquered, and a description of daily Aztec life including the resources and living conditions all in Nahuatl, the Aztec language. Codex Mendoza is named after Spanish viceroy Antonio de Mendoza, who commissioned it. The Codex Mendoza is reported to be a gift intended for Spanish King Charles V to encourage him to fund these explorations as well as ask for help to maintain power over the colonies. It never got to the Spanish King Charles V because of the French privateers who attacked the transporting Spanish ship, taking the manuscript away. There it came into the possession of André Thévet, cosmographer to King Henry II of France. Thévet wrote his name in five places on the codex, twice with the date 1553. It was later bought by the Englishman Richard Hakluyt for 20 French francs. Sometime after 1616 it was passed to Samuel Purchase, then to his son, and then to John Selden. The codex was eventually deposited into the Bodleian Library at Oxford University in 1659 just 5 years after Selden's death. The Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford is the largest university library system in the United Kingdom, the Codex Mendoza remained in obscurity until 1831, when it was rediscovered by Viscount Kingsborough and brought to the attention of scholars.
The Codex Mendoza mentions flea size chilli which was likely the wild if not related to the first wild peppers. The usage of the word “Chilli Pepper” is European influence and a combination of words. When the first Europeans reached the Caribbean they called Capsicum "peppers" because it had a very similar reaction to this fruit that reminded them of black pepper of the genus Piper known in Europe as a peppercorn. On a biochemical scale, the peppercorn contains the molecule piperine which belongs to a class of compounds known as alkaloids. This molecule structure has similarities with capsicum, and it so happens that these structures in peppercorn can lead to similar interactions just like in chilli. So when the first Europeans ate these fruits they called them peppers because of these similar interactions. Chilli with a double “l” is a proper spelling in Nahuatl. Chiltepin is derived from the Aztec language (Nahuatl) words "chile" + "tecpintl," which translates to "flea chile - tiny, but with a strong bite." The historiography in the Codex Mendoza has a reference to the chiltepin. The chilli is believed to have first been known as "chiltepictl," and over the years evolved to the version "chiltepín", before peppers became massive in size compared to their wild ancestors that were exclusively located in central and south America. Europeans would later simply combine these words to keep it rather simple and that is how this spice was dubbed and renamed chilli pepper instead of chiltepictl.
HOW CHILLI SPECIES GOT CALLED “CHINENSE”
A CHILLI CONUNDRUM
Capsicum chinense not from China a chilli fallacy
If anyone would ever tell you that chilli peppers originated in Asia, they would be wrong since fossil evidence shows that the Mesoamerica civilizations were using chilli well before anyone else in the world. Historians have many different theories on how chillies found their way into Asia from the Americas, possibly from explorers and traders from expeditions by the wealthy monarchs and royalty. The spread of chilli peppers to Asia also most likely occurred through its introduction by Portuguese traders, who were aware of its trade value and resemblance to the spiciness of black pepper, promoting its commerce in the Asian spice trade routes. Chilli has been cultivated for thousands of years in their native regions, but have only been available in areas outside of the Americas for about 400–500 years. Selection in the newer environments has led to the rise of new varieties that are now being bred and farmed in Asia and Africa. Europeans travelled across the oceans bringing with them the chilli they took from the Americas to other parts of the world with the intent of trading. This would ultimately make chilli peppers the first time in human history to be known as a worldwide commodity. You could also say that Chilli was a globalized currency during the 15th century.
There is room for argument that there is not enough proof to support that concept. Chilli got to Southeast Asia from two directions. The Portuguese brought the chilli into the Indian Ocean basin, but there is no evidence they were doing so for trading purposes. The likely reason is that it's never a trade commodity because even in that period it can be easily grown in temperate climates. That's a big difference between the chilli pepper and the traditional spice trade staples spices such as nutmeg, black pepper, cloves; they all require a tropical climate to grow so they have to be continually imported into places like China and Europe. If all you need is a few seeds and you can grow them on your own, that would decrease the need to purchase trade. So how did such a slip-up of this mislabeled species keep being labeled “chinense” when the chilli peppers origins were exclusively from the New World. The roots of this error stem from research from a Dutch scientist who ended up working for the Austrian crown, Nikolaus Joseph Freiherr von Jacquin, a scientist who studied medicine, chemistry, and botany. Jacquin was born in Leiden in the Netherlands (1727–1818), he studied medicine at Leiden University, then moved first to Paris and afterward to Vienna. In 1763, Jacquin became professor of chemistry and mineralogy at the Bergakademie Schemnitz (now Banská Štiavnica in Slovakia). In 1768, he was appointed Professor of Botany and Chemistry and became director of the botanical gardens of the University of Vienna. In 1783, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1809, he became a correspondent of the Royal Institute, which later became the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Jacquin is most famous for his work on plant physiology and is also credited with discovering the process of photosynthesis. Plans were initiated by Emperor Francis I Stephan of Lorraine in 1753 to build a monumental garden and greenhouse at the Schönbrunn Palace. Between 1754 and 1759, Jacquin was sent to the West Indies, Central America, Venezuela to collect plants, trees, seeds, for the Schönbrunn Palace, and amassed a large collection of animals, plant and mineral samples. He took a trip to the French colonized islands of America, together with his Dutch head gardener and two Italian zoologists to collect plants and birds for the menagerie of his imperial majesty. Jacquin spent four years exploring the West Indies and also made drawings and watercolors of the many new species he collected. These drawings proved vitally important when his herbarium specimens were largely destroyed or stolen by ants, termites, and mold, tropical storms, shipwrecks, capture, and attack by pirates and opposing military forces from other countries. A Herbarium is a collection of dried plant specimens mounted on sheets of paper. The mounted plants are labeled with their proper scientific names, the name of the collector, and, usually, information about where they were collected and how they grew, and general observations. On January 9th the French minister of the Navy sent a letter to the governor ́s office in Martinique saying:
”The Emperor has asked the King ́s permission to send the Dutch-born M. Nicolas Jacquin to the French islands of America, together with a gardener and two other men to collect plants and birds for the menagerie of his imperial majesty. M. Jacquin will embark on these islands very shortly. The king intends that while he is in Martinique and the other Windward Islands you provide all the aid possible so that he can execute his mission. But, while personally ministering to all his needs, you must oversee and be aware of his conduct and that of the people who accompany him, so that they do not intermix, nor take notes of their findings besides those of their mission. It is particularly important that you prevent them from having any correspondence with the foreign colonies during their stay in the French Islands, and you will make sure that you give me a complete account of all that occurs in their respect”. On 8 May 1755, the governor general of the Îles du Vent, Maximin de Bompar (1698–1773) and his intendant Antoine Lefebvre de Givry, wrote to the minister that they would do as ordered with respect to M. Nicolas Jacquin. The determined Scientist Jacquin would spend no less than three months in Marseille waiting for a ship and travel documents.
This was a botanical expedition to the Caribbean for the royal crown. When Jacquin finally got to the Caribbean, he was captured and imprisoned by British forces for a year. On his release, he remained in America, visiting Cuba and Jamaica to collect plants before returning to Vienna in 1759. Upon his return in 1759, he quickly published his botanical findings in a small booklet listing, Selectarum stirpium Americanarum historia the plants he had studied during his exploration of the Americas. This volume contains Linnaean taxonomic descriptions of plants. Ferdinand Bauer and his brother Franz were employed as botanical artists that made a total of 184 copperplate engravings of the species described for Jacquin’s Icones Plantarum rariorum (1781–1793), which includes rare plants from Schönbrunn. Jacquin also produced another ambitious publication of the plants grown in Schönbrunn’s imperial gardens, Plantarum rariorum horti caeseri Schoenbrunnensis Descriptiones et icones (1797–1804). In 1763, soon after publishing his book on the American plants, he was offered three positions by empress Maria Theresa. One in Innsbruck, another in Saint Petersburg, and the third one in Schemnitz. Although he initially had strong doubts about going to Schemnitz because he had to teach in German, a language in which he was not very fluent, he was encouraged by the empress herself to take this position, and so he did. It involved a professorship and directorship of the Mining Academy with an imperial salary of 500 gold Ducats (2,000 Gulden), a grant from the Emperor for his American journey, an elegant house with a garden, a furnished laboratory, a dowry for his recently wedded wife Katherina Josepha von Schreibers, and allowance for fire-wood and fodder for four horses. Now that his financial wellbeing was secured he could now dedicate himself solely to science. Jacquin was the most important of the younger contemporaries of Linnaeus and the first writer in German to utilize Linnaeus's system of binary nomenclature to any significant degree. Jacquin's Selectarum stirpium Americanarum historia remains a fundamental work on the Caribbean flora, his taxonomy and efforts were that impressive to get him set for life.
TAXONOMY ON CHILLI IS A NIGHTMARE
So why did Jacquin name the species C. Chinense? It is possible that no one in the community even knew about his naming of the species because all these plants practically look the same to the public eyes and only the most die hard chilli heads with keen eyes within the taxonomic field could spot them subtly. So what exactly is taxonomy you may be wondering? Taxonomy is the science of naming, describing and classifying organisms and includes all plants, animals and microorganisms of the world. There are eight distinct taxonomic categories: Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species, and with each step down in classification, organisms are split into more and more specific groups.
We have five divided domesticated species of Capsicum, C. annuum, C. baccatum, C. frutescens, C. pubescens, C. sinense (C. chinense even though not from china) and there even more species roughly around 28 wild forms. For example jalapeño taxonomy follows: Kingdom: Plantae Division: Magnoliophyta Class: Magnoliopsida Subclass: Asteridae Order: Solanales Family: Solanaceae Genus: Capsicum Species: C. annuum.
An identified species is placed into a specific group in each of these categories. The jalapeño for example is a plant so it gets placed in the kingdom of Plantae and since it's a nightshade, it also gets placed in the family of the Solanaceae. All of these words are just terminology that helps keep everything organized and cataloged for scientists all over the world. The genus and species that an organism belongs to are how an organism receives its scientific name. This naming system is called ‘binomial nomenclature’ and was invented by a biologist named Nilsson Carl Linnaeus, who was the one who made classification, Linnaeus was the father of taxonomic and gave us the binomial system of naming and classifying organisms. Trying to find any leads as to why Jacquin gave the chilli species name C. chinense falls back to from his published work Hortus Botanicus Vindobonensis.
Image from von Jacquin’s Hortus Botanicus Vindobonensis at the Biblioteca Digital del Real Jardin Botanico de Madrid.
TABULA SEXAGESIMA SEPTIMA.
Capsicum Chinense
“I gave him the name from his fatherland, which I consider to be different from the genera of the Linnæans. A woody trunk, covered with a craff thumb, and covered with ashes-bark, lasts for several years now in the skillet, while the branches perish last winter; and that in many individuals. Tota is smooth. The leaves are ovate, acuminate, upright, alternate, widely petiolate. Uni-flowered feet, folitaries or twins, short, nodding. The calyx is small and sharp. The border of the petals is cut deep into lanceolate skirts with some whitening yellow; which on top of each tube they pour out a drop of sweet liquid, under the form of a bead sticking there. Anthers erect atroviolet. The fruit is bright, ovate, obtuse, obsolate, angled, and of a complex structure, yellow. The seeds are pale. I saw the fillet cultivated in Martinique, and the fruit used in the kitchen.”
This is an approximate translation that allows us to further explore his process and intention. Unfortunately Von Jacquin’s description does not say why he thought it was from China. It only says, roughly, “I gave him the name from his fatherland”. “I saw the fillet cultivated in Martinique.” The rough translation suggests that Jacquin had seen this kind of pepper on the island of Martinique, in the Caribbean. Which would make sense if this was native species he was observing that dominates and resides in that region of the world. One reason we could believe is just that maybe Jacquin was never aware of the true origin of chilli in the first place. He was not the first person to discover chilli so keep that in mind. As many others travel and transported chilli all over the world well before Jacquin was even born, so with the given nature of chilli’s widespread existence already established throughout the entire world from trade and cultivation, just might be possible that Jacquin mistook chilli’s origin from China thinking it was brought to Mesoamerica but in actuality he simply got it backwards. There is also the possibility no one with enough insight was around or even aware he came up with the naming of new species. This made it practically impossible to question his findings during the 18th century and his new species faded away into chilli lore or legend as the mystery we perceived. The best way to find out more info is to look deeper into his first original works and samples. That information is not being explored because they remain either hidden or locked away in universities or museums. So it remains a mystery as to why Jacquin thought China was the species' place of origin.
THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE CHILLI SPECIES
BIOLOGICAL/MORPHOLOGICAL SPECIES
C. annuum, C. frutescens, C. sinense are not easy to tell apart unless you have a keen eye and prior knowledge of these plants. One would need to know the differences ahead of time to figure it out from just first glance. The species are extremely variable, the number of flowers that grow from the base of each leaf or particularly in characters of the fruit, and there is much parallel variation. Excessive emphasis on differences in fruit color, shape and position, led to the publication of numerous binomials in the late 18th century and the early part of the 19th century, accompanied by only brief descriptions which often fail to give what are now considered diagnostic features. Types, when extant, are often fragmentary or do not include both flowers and fruits. To complicate matters, the three species have interbred to varying extents making it by far the most challenging to determine their differences for classification taxonomic. It would be some time before the community could all finally agree on some staple species names for chillies and clear the confusion up. A battle was destined to happen over deciding what would be the accepted names over the years.
There has been considerable debate on the number of species in the genus Capsicum. The first literary references on the classification of pepper are to be found in botanical books produced in the 16th century. Before Nilsson Carl Linnaeus published his Species Plantarum (1753) several authors had already tried to classify peppers. Robert Morrison's Plantarum Historiae Universalis Oxoniensis, (1699), listed 33 variants for pepper. In 1700 Joseph Pitton de Tournefort listed 27 species. Although Linnaeus reduced Capsicum to just two species in 1753 (C. annuum and C. frutescens), he added C. baccatum and C. grossum in 1767. Ruiz and Pavon (1790) and Willdenow (1798) described C. pubescens and C. pendulum, respectively. Michel Félix Dunal made further attempts to clarify the taxonomy of the genus by describing 50 Capsicum species and listing another 11 taxa as possible species. By 19th century he named more than 90 species within the genus, but Irish (1898) returned to the original Linnaean concept of two species which would mark the start of the modern era concept with recognizing only just the two species, annuum and frutescens, that had been initially recognized by Nilsson Carl Linnaeus. Irish reduction of many of the earlier species was based primarily on characteristics of the fruit. Liberty Hyde Bailey, felt differently (1923) went further and recognized only one species, choosing the name C. frutescens over C. annuum although Kuntze (1891) had combined the two under the latter name. The 'two-species' concept was widely accepted until 1923, when Bailey made the argument that, because it was a perennial in the tropics or could be grown in a greenhouse as a perennial, C. annuum was not a true Capsicum, leaving just C. frutescens. While one may criticize the treatments of Irish and Bailey, it should be remembered that they worked with material from a limited geographic area, mostly cultivars from the United States, whereas the additional species recognized today are almost all South American. As previously discussed, C. sinense (C. chinense) was first given by Jacquin in 1776, but this recognition was unknown until Paul G. Smith and Charles Bixler Heiser Jr. (1957) re-examined these materials and suggested separating Jacquinʼs Capsicum sinense from C. frutescens and renaming it for an unknown reason as C. chinense.
It was at this moment in history where a chilli species will also be forever now known for mistakenly attributing the origin of the species of pepper as Chinese by Nikolaus von Jacquin who named the genus of a pepper “Capsicum chinense” in 1776. Later on Smith and Heiser (1957) described C. chinense as having glabrous leaves and stem, with ovate to ovate lanceolate leaves. There are two to five flower buds per node, pedicels are declinate and relatively short and thick. In addition, it has a calyx without teeth, but with a marked constriction between the pedicel and calyx. However, there are accessions that possess one or a few diagnostic morphological characters from one species and the rest of the characters from the other species, creating difficulties in species assignment. Smith and Heiser (1957) compared these two species systematically for the first time. Smith and Heiser would go on to conclude that C. frutescens and C. chinense could be distinguished morphologically. In biology, morphology is the branch that deals with the form of living organisms. For plants, plant morphology or phytomorphology is the study of the physical form and external structure of plants, whereas plant anatomy is the study of the internal plant structure, mostly at the cellular/microscopic level. Their hybridization experiment between C. frutescens and C. chinense resulted in a very low seed set as well as a very low pollen viability in plants of the F1 generation. The F1 plants produced nonviable seeds. As more accessions of both species were studied, they were found to be closely related. The relationship appeared to be so close that separate species treatment was eventually questioned by many researchers. The conflicting reports have confounded the biological and taxonomic relationships between these two species. Despite getting closer to a consensus, more confusion occurred because some authors, although agreeing with Bailey's 'one-species' concept, called the 'one true species' C. annuum instead of C. frutescens. Eventually, two botanists Heiser and Smith (1953) categorized the genus into four different species C.annuum, C.frutescens, C.baccatum and C.pubescens and another, 4 years later, Smith and Heiser (1957) determined that C. chinense was another valid species which would later all end our current list of five domesticated species.
With the help of modern molecular methods; the three species C. annuum, C. frutescens, C. sinense arise from a single ancestor and are one another’s closest relatives. Unraveling the species dilemma was result of using morphology, molecular analysis, and sexual compatibility. Morphological observations, RAPD-based cluster analysis, and sexual compatibility provided evidence that C. frutescens and C. chinense are distinct species. For the most part, within Capsicum, morphological criteria have been used to establish species. As more biological information on the gene flow within and between Capsicum populations is obtained, the species that are recognized within the genus Capsicum may change dramatically. Saccarod and La Gioria (1982) found that abnormal chromosome pairings occurred when a C. annuum accession from Colombia was crossed with Mexican or US (New Mexico) accessions of C. annuum; reduced fertility in the progeny was caused by several translocations that had occurred between the Colombian population and the other two populations. It appears that geographic isolation of C. annuum populations has allowed the species to begin a differentiation process that could possibly lead to two different species. Whether the species concept used is typological, phylogenetic, or biological, they all unequivocally support the preposition that these two groups of plants are separate species. Furthermore, the RAPDs (Random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) is a PCR based technique for identifying genetic variation) have explanatory power and can be used as a basis for establishing species identification. Two particularly important features of RAPDs were ability to do the analysis before the plant flowers, and the ability to detect interspecific introgression. The method clearly demarcates those accessions having risen from interspecific introgression, and may be useful in conservation genetics and crop evolution. It basically helps by giving us some proof that over time these chillies started to become more distant from each other on genetic scale but still close enough to make possible hybrids later down the line thus explaining or showing us some insight on why certain chillies have easier or harder time breeding fertile offspring.
Five domesticated species are recognized within the genus Capsicum and it is anticipated that other species will be discovered. Capsicum comes in a multitude of forms, colors and sizes of fruit, which makes it difficult to differentiate without genetic knowledge, and the early taxonomists mostly based their naming of Capsicum species on fruit morphology. Plant scientists define species in several ways but typically recognize either biological species or morphological species, with these two main types of species established, taxonomically, using different sets of criteria. A plant taxonomist, when trying to establish a morphological species, usually examines floral traits and looks for similarities and differences in flower structure. Two populations of plants with floral traits that appear identical may be grouped together as a single morphological species. A biological species is defined as a population or series of populations within which free gene flow occurs under natural conditions, with fertile and healthy progeny produced by interbreeding within the species. For the most part, within Capsicum, morphological criteria has been used to establish species. As more biological information on the gene flow within and between Capsicum populations is obtained, the species that are recognized within the genus Capsicum may change dramatically. Saccarod and La Gioria (1982) found that abnormal chromosome pairings occurred when a C. annuum accession from Colombia was crossed with Mexican or US (New Mexico) accessions of C. annuum; reduced fertility in the progeny was caused by several translocations that had occurred between the Colombian population and the other two populations. It appears that geographic isolation of C. annuum populations has allowed the species to begin a differentiation process that could possibly lead to two different species. This proves that the environment can impact and create new species over time.