SC - Royal declared chocolate period

[david friedman]

At 10:15 AM -0600 1/31/99, Decker, Terry D. wrote:

>>From Persian coffee roasting pans dated to the early 15th Century, we know
>that coffee was consumed in Persia before the general spread of coffee.
>This suggests that coffee as a beverage existed in the 14th Century.

How do we know they are coffee roasting pans? How precisely are they dated?

This is an example of a more general issue--how to interpret a situation
where almost all of the available evidence suggests that something was
introduced after date X, but there is one piece of evidence that implies it
was introduced  earlier. If evidence were proof, the answer would be
obvious--you accept the earlier date. But evidence isn't proof. In
particular, the fact that one piece of evidence is anomalous is itself
evidence (not proof) that someone has made a mistake.

The example I am thinking of is not coffee in Persia but peanuts in China.
Almost all available evidence points to peanuts as a new world crop that
only appears in the old world after Columbus. But there is one piece of
archaeological evidence for peanuts in China much earlier than that. The
same work also shows evidence for other things at that early date that
other evidence suggests shouldn't be there.

In my view, the most plausible explanation is that the archaeologist in
question misdated his dig. In the coffee case the argument isn't as strong,
since Coffee is an old world crop, and the question is only when its usage
as a drink spread. But I am still suspicious of the isolated early date,
given the amount of evidence Hattox offers for a somewhat later date.

David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/


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