Chili pepper (Capsicum spp. L.) origins have been difficult to determine until recently, because the macro-remains of the plant are only preserved archaeologically quite rarely. Fruits, seeds or pollen have been found at sites in the Tehuacan Valley beginning about 6000 years ago; at Huaca Prieta in Peru by ca. 4000 years ago, at Ceren, El Salvador by 1400 years ago; and in La Tigra, Venezuela by 1000 years ago.
The domesticated version of chili pepper has larger fruits than the wild versions; but even so there are at least 25 separate species in the family of American chili peppers. Similarities in the chilies lead researchers to believe there were at least two distinct events of domestication: one in South America, specifically southern Brazil to Bolivia; and a second one in Central America and Mexico.
Chili Peppers North of Mexico
The earliest evidence of chili peppers in the American southwest/northwest Mexico has been identified in Chihuahua state near the site of Casas Grandes, ca AD 1150-1300. But, interestingly, chili peppers did not become a major part of southwestern US/northwestern Mexican cuisine until after Spanish colonization of the region.
A single chili pepper seed was found at Site 315, a medium-sized adobe pueblo ruin in the Rio Casas Grandes Valley about two miles from the site of Casas Grandes. In the same context--a trash pit directly underneath a room floor--was found maize (Zea mays), cultivated beans (Phaseolus vulgaris), cotton seeds (Gossypium hirsutum), prickly pear (Opuntia), goosefoot seeds (Chenopodium), uncultivated Amaranth (Amaranthus) and a possible squash (Cucurbita) rind. Radiocarbon dates on the trash pit are 760 +/- 55 years before the present, or approximately AD 1160-1305.
Unlike the other central American domesticated crops of maize, beans and squash, though, chili peppers did not become part of southwestern US/northwestern Mexican cuisine until after Spanish contact. Researchers Paul Minnis and Michael Whalen suggest that the spicy chili pepper may not have fit into local culinary preferences until a large influx of colonists from Mexico and (most importantly) a Spanish colonial government affected the local appetites. Even then, chilis were not universally adopted by all southwestern people.
When introduced into Europe by Columbus, the chili launched a mini-revolution in cuisine; and when those chili-loving Spanish returned and moved into the Southwest, they brought the spicy domesticate with them. Chillies, a large part of central American cuisines for thousands of years became most common north of Mexico in places where the Spanish colonial courts were most powerful.
Starches and Chili Peppers
Recently, the study of starch grains, which do preserve well and are identifiable to species, has allowed scientists to peg the domestication of chili peppers to at least 6,100 years ago, in southwestern Ecuador at the sites of Loma Alta and Loma Real. As reported in Science in 2007, the earliest discovery of chili pepper starches is from the surfaces of milling stones and in cooking vessels as well as in sediment samples, and in conjunction with microfossil evidence of arrowroot, maize, leren, manioc, squash, beans and palms.
Sources
This article on the domestication of chili peppers is part of the About.com Guide to Plant Domestications, and part of the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Eshbaugh, W. Hardy. 1993. Peppers: History and Exploitation of a Serendipitous New Crop Discovery. pages 132-139. In: J. Janick and J.E. Simon (eds.), New Crops Wiley, New York.
Minnis PE, and Whalen ME. 2010. The first prehispanic chile (Capsicum) from the U.S. southwest/northwest Mexico and its changing use. American Antiquity 75(2):245-258.
Perry, Linda et al. 2007 Starch Fossils and the Domestication and Dispersal of Chili Peppers (Capsicum spp. L.) in the Americas. Science 315:986-988.
Pickersgill, Barbara 1969 The archaeological record of chili peppers (Capsicum spp.)and the sequence of plant domestication in Peru. American Antiquity 34:54-61.
