Search Results: Pepper

Since antiquity, pepper has always been the most important spice in the world. It played a central role in the medicines of ancient India and China, became a critical component of Roman food, and remained central in the cuisine of medieval...

Pepper has long been the king of spices and for almost 2,000 years dominated world trade. Originating in India, it was known in Greece by the 4th century BCE and was an integral part of the Roman diet by 30 BCE. It remained a force in Europe...

Items from the Hoxne Hoard including the 7.5 cm high silver pepper pot known as the 'Empress' pepper pot. Discovered in Suffolk, in the east of England in 1992 CE, the incredible collection contains 14,865 late-4th and early-5th century...

Black pepper (Piper nigrum).

Dried long pepper catkins (Piper longum).

A possible trade route for pepper from India to Rome.

From Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen (1897).

One of the major motivating factors in the European Age of Exploration was the search for direct access to the highly lucrative Eastern spice trade. In the 15th century, spices came to Europe via the Middle East land and sea routes, and spices...

The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea is an eyewitness account of ancient travel to Africa and India via the Red Sea written by an unknown Greek-speaking Egyptian author in the 1st century CE. In this detailed account, the conditions of the...

As the 15th century ended, Europeans were still mostly in the dark about the Eastern world. Early travelers like Marco Polo had given the West tidbits of information, but these accounts were too highly colored and fragmentary to provide a...