SC - Re: SC-Peanuts
Elise Fleming
alysk at ix.netcom.com
Thu Nov 6 17:51:51 PST 1997
Greetings. Charles wrote:
>According to a documentary on the 'cocaine mummies' of vienna,
>peanuts were found in China at least 2000 years old. But it was said
>that they are a native american (N?S?) product
This was mentioned in Sophie Coe's _America's First Cuisines_. Turns
out that the peanut shells were dropped in modern times by people
visiting/working on the graves. Gotta be careful those tv shows! She
writes (page 34-35), "The first Chinese reference to peanuts dates from
the 1530s, but there was a flurry among plant historians and
archaeologists a few years ago when a few peanut shells were found in
excavations at an Early Lungshanoid site dating from 3200 to 2500 B.C.
It was the site that was that old, but the peanut shells were
contemporary with the excavators, not the site they were excavating.
She mentions that the peanut was "brought to West Africa from Brazil by
the Portuguese, along with maize and the sweet potatoes. While the
Portuguese were moving peanuts east, the Spaniards were taking them
west across the Pacific from Peru and introducing them to the Far
East." She also notes that the peanut was "first imported into the
United States from West Africa, on the ships that brought the slaves."
I mentioned this book a week or so ago and still recommend it highly
for anyone interested in New World foods. (And yes, I am doing a
review for "Serve It Forth".)
Alys Katharine
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