Aquila Children's Magazine AQUILA Magazine Best Bits | Page 20

The extraordinary history of sugar has
been built upon our love for the taste
of sweet things. Over thousands of
years, sugar has conquered the world.
Its chequered story is one of
exploration, discovery, invasion, war,
slavery and invention.
Sugarcane plants first grew on the
island of New Guinea around 10,000
years ago. The people who lived there
enjoyed chewing the sweet reeds, and
they soon carried them on to the
neighbouring islands around the South
Pacific and eventually on to India
and China.
FUN FACT TRUMPET
Before sugar was discovered, the most
popular sweetener in the ancient
world was honey. The Romans, ancient
Egyptians, ancient Greeks and Vikings
all used it in their cooking.
A SwEeT CuRe-aLl
FUN FACT TRUMPET
The word sugar comes from
the Sanskrit word śarkarā.
Gradually, sugar came to be discovered
by those from further away. When
Darius of Persia invaded India in 510
BCE, he marvelled at the ‘reed which
gives honey without any bees.’ When
India was invaded in 300 BCE by
Alexander the Great’s general, Nearchus,
he took the sweet treat back to Greece.
At this time, sugar wasn’t just thought
to be delicious, it was also believed to
have medicinal properties. The Romans
used it to cure stomach pains and
headaches and, when the world’s very
first teaching hospital was founded in
Iran in about 600 CE, doctors wrote
about how to use sugar as a medicine.
However, it was considered a luxury
item. It was only available to the
handful of people who could afford it.
FUN FACT TRUMPET
The Romans also used sapa to
sweeten their wine. They didn’t
know it was a highly poisonous
chemical known as lead acetate, or
sugar of lead.
In spite of its price, the desire for this
sweet stuff increased and the
cultivation of sugarcane continued to
move across the Mediterranean into
Africa, Cyprus, Sicily, and Andalusia
(southern Spain). It reached even
deeper into Europe when, at the end of
the eleventh century, a series of
European invasions – the Crusades
– arrived in the Middle East. The
invading Crusaders discovered sugar
and those who returned home carried
this tasty ‘sweet salt’ back with them.
MeRcHaNtS Of vEnIcE
New traders saw an opportunity to
bring the discovery to a wider European
audience. The city of Venice was quick
to take advantage of this demand.
Venetian merchants had already
established trading relationships with
cities in Asia and the Middle East. They
used land around Tyre in modern-day
Lebanon to grow sugarcane, which
could be processed into its crystallised
form, shipped back to Europe and then
sold.