Capsicum Extract Health benefits
It was black pepper, primarily, that inspired most of mans great explorations of the Middle Ages, including the discovery of the usa. Black pepper started America's have business dealings with the Orient and played a vital role in the early days of the United States. On June 23, 1672, the first colonial American took a dynamic part in spice trading: Boston-born Elihu Yale, later to offer his name and wealth on the renowned University, arrived in Madras, India, as a clerk in the British East India Company. There he established contacts where he built a king's ransom in spices. In 1780, Jonathan Carnes broke Europe's spice monopoly by dealing directly using the East Indies and bringing a shipload of pepper returning to Salem, Massachusetts. From 1799 to 1846, pepper, worth millions of dollars, was exposed to Salem by daring Yankee skippers who founded America's merchant marine.
Pepper comes from the dried berry (called a peppercorn) of a woody, climbing vine. Its scientific name is Piper nigrum L. There is no relation to the pod peppers that provide us sweet green and red peppers and the hot capsicum peppers (chili). When Columbus dropped anchor in the New World in search of spices, he discovered chili peppers and made at least two mistakes we still experience. Thinking he is at India, he called indigenous peoples Indians. He also named chilies peppers, thinking they were related to black pepper, Piper Nigrum, they will are not. The family of chili peppers is termed Capsicum.
In the pre-Columbian tribes of Panama, the Shaman (spiritual medium) used Capsicum in conjunction with cacao and tobacco to initiate hallucinatory trances, in order to travel to the celebs or to the underworld. Today, the Cuna Indians of Panama burn capsicum so the irritating smoke will chase away evil spirits after a girl's puberty ceremony. Additionally they trail a string of capsicum behind their canoes to discourage sharks from attacking, thus supplying the earliest insight into the possible use of capsicum being a shark repellent.
In southern Mexico and also the Yucatan Peninsula, capsicums have been part of the human diet since about 7500 B.C. and thus their use predates the 2 great central American civilizations, the Mayas along with the Aztecs. From their original use like a spice collected within the wild, capsicums gained importance after their domestication, and were a significant food when the Olmec culture was developing around 1000 B.C. By the time the Mayas reached the peak of their civilization in southern Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula, around A.D. 500, that they a highly developed system of agriculture. Perhaps possibly thirty different kinds of Capsicum were cultivated.
The American wild chili peppers probably came from present-day Bolivia by means of birds dispersing the seeds, and eventually spread throughout Central and South America. Chilies were a dominant part of early American diets. The archaeological record at Tehuacan, Mexico southeast of Mexico City, demonstrates wild peppers were eaten in Meso-America at least as far back as 7000 B.C., and were probably domesticated by 2500 B.C. Towards the Incas, chili peppers were among the four brothers in the creation myth, Agar-Uchu or Brother Chili Pepper.
Chilies were discovered when the Spanish explorers came to the Caribbean. In the islands off the New World they found little red-colored vegetable pods which the natives used in cooking and which imparted a clear bite to food. Peter Martyr, who stumbled on America with Columbus in 1493, wrote, There are innumerable kinds of Agi (the Indian term for pod peppers), the variety whereof is famous by their leaves and flowers. Some were red, some yellow, some violet, some brown, some white. These were of all shapes and sizes. The only real aromatic plants Columbus located in the Western World however, were capsicums: lots of Aji, (capsicum pepper), which is more valuable than pepper, and allspice or pimenta, a tree whose leaf had the best smell of cloves that I ever met with, thus wrote Dr. Diego Chanca of Columbus expedition. To acquire more information pertaining to capsicum extract take a look at: Capsicum
The podded Capsicum family turned out to be extremely adaptable when the explorers sent seeds back to Europe. In an amazingly short period of time, the cultivation of Capsicum pods spread to almost every part of the world. Moreover, in several places the pods developed different characteristics with regard to shape, color, size and pungency.
The appearance of capsicum through the New World coincided with the invasion from the Ottoman Turks and resulted in their spread throughout Central Europe. The armies of Suleyman the Magnificent conquered Syria and Egypt in 1516-17, Yugoslavia in 1521, and Hungary in 1526. The season 1526 is the date usually given for your introduction of the capsicum referred to as paprika into Hungary by the Turks. With this invasion a new crop was unveiled in the land with the Magyars. The Turks called it Turkish Pepper, the Hungarians called it paparka, a variation on the Bulgarian piperka, which in turn was derived from the Latin piper, for pepper. The brilliant red powder we understand as paprika comes from the dried pods (fruit) in the plant species Capsicum annuum L. As a result, it is part of a botanical group that ranges from your sweet Bell peppers we eat as being a vegetable to the very hottest of chilies.
