[Sca-cooks] Sugar and slaves

[Terry Decker]

Herodotus and several other Greek writers refer to sugar as early as the 5th 
Century BCE, but it is referenced as a rare medical ingredient.  Pliny, as I 
recall, is referencing Nearchus's advance into India around 325 BCE. 
Sometime around 500 BCE, sugarcane cultivation and sugar production began in 
Mesopotamia, where it appears to have been encountered by the Arabs during 
the Islamic expansion and introduced into the Mediterranean Basin.  To my 
knowledge, there is no credible evidence for the claim of 3000 years of 
sugar cultivation in Egypt.

Bear

>> nor did they find
>> sugar in Egypt which they cultivated from the 3,000 B.C but then of
>> course Egyptians did not exist either.
>
> <shrug> You'd think they would have known about sugar, but Pliny
> _does_ assert that the people of Hind had this curious habit of
> making honey from reeds. Certainly sugar isn't mentioned by Cato,
> Apicius, or Columella, as best as I can recall.
>
>
> Adamantius