science, health & technology

It should come as no great surprise that when, in an article published in the February 16 issue of the journal Science, 15 scientists in various fields expounded on the ancient ubiquity of chili peppers, three of the co-authors turned out to be connected with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), which is headquartered here in Panama.

Professor Dolores Piperno, after all, pioneered the analysis of microscopic fossilized particles of starch grains recovered from ancient grinding stones in her search for the origins of corn. Before the Smithsonian researcher and Ivy league professor began her work it was generally thought that corn was first domesticated in the Andes. Now it seems that it goes back much earlier than supposed --- more than 10,000 years ago --- and its first cultivation was more likely somewhere in Meso-America. That search continues.

Piperno's discoveries based on starch grain analysis were helped along by collaborations with STRI archaeologist Richard G. Cooke, who has made sites in Panama's central provinces his life's work and has paid particular attention to ancient refuse heaps and what the bones, scales, seeds and other detritus tell us about what Panamanians of previous millennia ate. Subjecting the metates (grinding stones) that he has found at sites near Aguadulce and in the Azuero Peninsula to the starch particle analysis that Piperno developed greatly increased the knowledge in his field.

And so it is that a number of archeologists, paleo-botanists, anthropologists and other specialists, including Dr. Irene Holst as well as doctors Piperno and Cooke --- all affiliated with STRI --- have been independently discovering the roots of agriculture, both in the New World and the Eastern Hemisphere. When the 15 scientists published in Science compared notes they found that they have been documenting traces of chili peppers --- five domesticated species of the Capsicum genus --- going back at least 6,000 years, in places as widely separated as Ecuador, Panama, Venezuela and the Bahamas.

Already at the times of the earliest finds, the vegetables had been long domesticated and bred for certain characteristics, and indeed the Americas had cultures that liked their corn and squash-based diets spiced up with hot peppers.

The search for the origins of chili peppers' domestication is far from over, although it seems that some of the species originally came from Bolivia, Brazil, others from Brazil, Meso-America and the Caribbean. It seems that peppers, both of the hot and sweet varieties, moved around as people migrated and took seeds with them.

This line of inquiry is not only of historic and archaeological importance. Usually plants brought by migrating human beings for intentional cultivation are thought of as something distinct from "invasive species," but as the elephant grass (paja canalera) that was imported from Vietnam to shore up the banks of the Panama Canal ought to show us, the idea that separates people's intentional acts from our unwitting blunders is most probably a homo sapiens conceit. It is suspected that the search for chili peppers's origins and dispersal patterns may give us some more general knowledge about the nature and speed of invasive plant species, which in turn could affect agricultural and wildlife management techniques and laws.

The chili pepper story could also add some humbling lessons for humanity if the suspicions that Capsicum's dispersal shows the existence of more widespread trade and communication in the ancient Americas than had been previously supposed can be verified. That would in turn indicate that, long before anybody started talking about a Free Trade Area of the Americas, and well before this hemisphere had visitors or colonists from other continents, we saw the rise and the fall of large international trading areas.

Also in this section:

Another look at the post-Panamax lock problem