Everything You Want To Know About Chilli History - Origins & Indians

In this page we'll go right back to the beginning of the chilli through to the time Columbus arrived.

• Chillies are a native plant of the Americas originating somewhere in either Central America or northern South America. There is thought have been one original variety from which the plethora available now have been developed.
• The earliest chilli growers were the indigenous peoples of the central Americas, who had emigrated from northern Europe around 8,000-10,000 BC.
• Archaeologists have estimated that humans began farming chillies between 5,000 BC and 3,400 BC, which makes them one of the oldest crops cultivated by man.
• The spelling of the word chile is the Hispaniolised version of the Nahuatl word chili (Nahuatl was the language of the inhabitants of the central highlands of Mexico when the Spaniards arrived and is still spoken in many modified forms today).
• According to food historian, Sophie Coe, the first chilli sauces were developed by the Mayan Indians around 1500-1000 BC and were used for tortilla dipping. These sauces initially consisted of chilli powder and water, however, the later addition of other ingredients led to the development of the sauces that are now associated with this region.
• Despite the Mayans having a head start over the Aztecs by a thousand years or so, it was the Aztecs that truly adopted the chilli into their entire culture. The best example of this was recorded by the Franciscan monk Bernadino de Sahagun in 1529. While fasting to appease their blood-thirsty gods, the Aztec priests required two abstentations by the faithful: sex and chillies”.
• The invention of the chipotle is attributed to the Teotihuacans whose civilisation reached it’s peak around 200AD. At that time the city was the sixth largest in the world. The Aztecs then adopted them into their culture and as with all other chillies, took them to new heights in both production and use.
• By the time Columbus arrived in the Americas, the Aztecs were growing not only the jalapeño, pasilla, ancho, and serrano, but the arbol and the mirasol. The sixteenth-century Spanish chronicler Fray Bernardino de Sahagœn wrote that in an Aztec market there were "hot green chillies, smoked chillies, water chillies, tree chillies, flea chillies, and sharp-pointed red chillies." He noted that the Aztecs classified chillies into six categories based not only on level of pungency (high to low), but also on the type of pungency (sharp to broad).
• The earliest known association of chillies and cocoa comes from the Ceren archaeological site in El Salvador. There were found a number of ceramic storage vessels containing both chilli and cacao seeds, one with the two separated by a piece of cotton gauze. This could represent some of the ingredients for an early mole sauce.
• By the time the Spanish arrived chillies and cacao pods were used as tributes and tax payments to the Aztec Emperor Montezuma who was particularly partial to the combination. One of the chroniclers travelling with Hernan Cortes observed, “The great Montezuma liked his cup of hot cocoa flavoured with vanilla, honey, and spiked with a good dose of red chilli.”
• The Aztecs also found other uses for chillies. Among the images in the Mendocino Codex—a visual record of Aztec life—is a painting of a father punishing his 11-year-old son by forcing the boy to inhale the smoke from dried chillies roasting on the fireplace.
• Aztec women believed that chilli powder made the skin beautiful and applied it as a paste made from mixing chilli powder and their urine !

• The Incas worshipped the chilli as a holy item, and considered the plant to be one of the four brothers of their creation myth, as recorded by Garcilaso de la Vega in 1609 in his Royal Commentaries of the Incas.
• Columbus arrived in Oct 12, 1492 and proceeded to make a number of misassumptions. He believed he was in the East Indies (Indonesia) because that was where he set out to for to develop a short cut for the spice trade. He then proceeded to try chillies as part of the local fare, and must have assumed they were a red variety of pepper, subsequently labelling them red pepper(s) – a name that refuses to die.

If you're interested in the next stage you can proceed to our Chillies circumnavigate the world page and see how chillies went around the world in 50 years in an era when all transport was either pulled by horse or wind driven.