Have We Always Been Hot For Spicy Food?

We can’t deny it: the world is pretty nuts about spicy food. Chillis, curries, Indian, Chinese – if it’s spicy, we just love it! A fascinating scientific discovery has proved that perhaps this spicy phenomenon is significantly more deep-rooted in our culture than we could ever have imagined.

Last week it was revealedthat prehistoric Denmark had cottoned on to the glory spice can add to your life a very long time ago, as residues which had been scraped from the inside pots found in the Baltic which were believed to be 6000 years old, show they were used to cook meat and fish that was seasoned with a peppery, mustard-like spice…so it looks like the Danes had it spot on!

Scientists have yet to discover how long humans have been using spices to flavour food, because though there have been traces of coriander seeds found at a 23,000-year-old site in Israel, we cannot be sure that they were used specifically to flavour food this early on. The earliest clear evidence that spices were intentionally added to food is from historic residue from northern Europe dating around 6100 years ago – the earliest known evidence of spices used for seasoning in Europe, and perhaps anywhere in the world. This scientific discovery adds a remarkable angle to the history of the hunter-gatherers, and hopefully there are more exciting discoveries yet to come!