Chile Pepper Fun Fact - Christopher Columbus
The Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria and Chile Peppers?
Chile peppers are eaten by a quarter of the earth’s population every day, in countries all over the globe. They are perennial shrubs belonging to the Capsicum family and were unknown to a good chunk of the world until Christopher Columbus made his way to the New World in 1492.
Columbus didn’t “find” them, of course. There are several origination theories flagging Brazil, Mexico, and other parts of South America as “the” spot for where chilies came from. A 2016 phylogenetic analysis of 24 of the 35 Capsicum strains, spicy and otherwise, found that they are native to an area along the Andes of western to north-western South America. These wild Capsicum were “small red, round, berry-like fruits “.
Use of chilies in both South American and early Mesoamerica, the region that extends from Central Mexico to Central America and northern Costa Rica, both lead to domestication in those areas and use in local cuisine in pre-Hispanic times.
In South America, researchers have identified starch grains of Capsicum on milling stones and cooking pots recovered from house floors in southwestern Ecuador dating them to around 6,000 years ago. These microfossil remains are some of the earliest chili peppers documented from the region. In addition, while many records from Mesoamerica focus on cultivation of squash, corn, manioc, and more without focus on chiles, an archeological study has shown via microfossils that the use of chiles in Mesoamerica may date all the way back to about 400 BCE.
Scientists believe that birds are mainly responsible for the spread of wild chili peppers out of their nuclear origination areas, with domestication via Mesoamerican populations thereafter. As noted below, birds don’t have receptors that feel the sting of a chili’s spice, and it doesn’t cause any harm to their digestive systems.
Capsicum annuum, the ancestor to most of the peppers commonly consumed today, was grown in pre-Hispanic times in parts of the arid Southwest, and Texas, as well as in Mexico.