AGE OF DISCOVERY
In the Age of Discovery (the 1400s to 1600s ) early explorers such as Christopher Columbus, Vasco Da Gama, Magellan, John Cabot, Giuseppe Verazzano, and Henry Hudson all were motivated to take long and dangerous sea voyages to find the elusive western passage to the fabled “Spice Islands” and the source region of immensely valuable commodities such as: Black Pepper, Nutmeg, Mace, Cardamon, Cinnamon, and Ginger. As a result of their ultimately failed efforts to find the non-existent western passage an event which would gain for them self-aggrandizement and immense wealth if successful. They failed but inadvertently discovered the New World and changed the course of history.
The underlying motivation for these daring,expensive, dangerous undertakings was the great demand for and high prices of seemingly inauspicious common plant based products we call “spices”.
What were some causes of the high demand and high prices of these products? A question which seemed interesting based on the great impact this historic quest had on world history.
Black Pepper (Piper nigrum) is one of most common and the spice with the longest (over 4000 year) history of use. It is also the most traded, and sold-in-the-most-volume. Today the world uses over 550,000 metric tons per year. The nation of Vietnam uses the most, followed by India and the USA. We in the USA import almost 70,000 metric tons of black pepper each year. (About 200 grams per person in USA or about 7 ounces per person/year) Pepper is used world-wide in almost every cuisine. Black pepper is the king of all spices..with the most demand and most common uses as a seasoning, and (in the past) as a medicine. Pepper is derived from the fruit of a tropical vine native to the lowland forests of India’s Malabar Coast. (By the way—It is noteworthy as a comparison that the USA —third in use of pepper as a spice—is the biggest first consumer of a powerful narcotic drug—-it consumes and illegally imports 350 tons (yes tons) of cocaine each year!)
What made black pepper so “in demand”? Like a modern drug, common seasoning spices like black pepper—are plant based stimulants which can alter human senses and impact mood. Spices have an effect on human physiology and metabolism and—one central and critical human sense we all take very seriously—taste.
The active ingredient in peppercorns is piperine a natural alkaloid which is the origin of its heat and pungent taste. Piperine is alleged to increase the absorption of certain minerals and vitamins into the gut and act is an antioxidant as well as an anti-inflammatory agent. It is also claimed to have so called “digestive benefits”.
Why did piperine evolve in the pepper vine? What was its function or purpose? Its acrid (spicy?) and heat generating impact animal tissues piperine may have functioned as a insect or herbivore repellant. It may have also functioned as an insecticide and a larvacide, while the fruit remained on the plant. And perhaps, after the seeds fell to earth, piperine acted as a seed protectant to control or limit chemical or biological decay of its fruits and seeds in its particularly warm humid biologically active native soils.
Pepper’s active ingredient piperine. can generate body heat (thermogenesis) and raise human metabolic rate temporarily. It also has a complement of unique flavors and allied chemical properties. These mimic the way certain recreational drugs function in the scan body. Its taste is sharp, and pungent. Besides it physiological activity pepper grains generate most of its “heat” response on the epithelial membranes of the oral cavity and tongue—-a particularly sensitive area with a particularly high concentration of nerve endings creating a dense network making more precise perceptions possible.
All of these properties transform and intensified the most essential of human senses—- the taste of foods—often radically transforming and improving the experience of taste. Thus spices have the ability to alter often banal local foods into something much more palatable and pleasant. This almost universal human response was a prime driving force which kept demand for pepper and other spices so high.
Pepper also acts, when combined with salt and other spices, as a food preservative. Many foods such as various cuts of meat (hams) and various dried and highly seasoned pork sausages are preserved over long periods by use of pepper and salt. Pepper also has anti-fungal and anti bacterial properties, as well as alleged medicinal uses as a warming agent and an aid to digestion.
ORIGIN OF BLACK PEPPER
The Malabar Coast is an exotic region sometimes referred to as a tropical paradise with a unique climate and biome. This region of India is subjected to seasonal winds which carry moisture-laden air from the Arabian Sea over coastal India. These winds are forced upward over the lower slopes of western Ghats (mountains) and as they do so they release the copious moisture they carry as rain. These seasonal (monsoon) winds are the main cause of the unique and highly humid tropical climate, (viz. monsoon tropical climate) of the region where pepper plants thrive. Τhe monsoon winds are responsible for the highly diverse biome which has evolved over millennia in this region (i.e. plants and unique animals) adapted to this low lying humid tropical state. The pluvial downpours often in the order of 100 inches or more each year, as well as high tropical air (95F)I temperatures have given rise to the very distinctive plants such as the pepper vine as well as unique animal species native to the area.
Black Pepper (Piper nigrum) is native to India’s southwestern Malabar Coast, a tropical region about 10 degrees North of the equator in the Indian state of Kerala. In its native land Black Pepper grows as a climbing vine in the humid broadleaf forests of that region. The plant thrives as a perennial, woody, climbing vine with ovate, leathery, dark green leaves and tiny white flowers which when flowering hang in a long narrow clump from the vine stem (like a thin bunch of tiny grapes) or spikes. The “fruits” of the pepper vine look like tiny cherries (drupes) and after fertilization mature on elongate spikes into a tiny fruit with a thin green, hard, outer skin. The vines which have a shallow root system are adapted to the moist tropical forest soils and the shade of the dense broadleaf forests. They climb on forest trees to a height of ten or more meters (more than 33 feet). These specific adaptations to climate and environment make it difficult to transplant them to other climatic and bio zones.
It is the fruit and seeds of the pepper plant— the tiny peppercorns— which are the highly valued part of this plant. If the berries are harvested when they are green..then dried, the peppercorn turns black to produce black pepper. If berries are harvested when they ripen to a yellow or red color and then the seeds are removed and dried they become the white variety of black pepper. The red variety is produced by harvesting when the berries are fully ripe (red) and drying the berry to produce the red peppercorn.
In prehistoric (Neolithic to Iron Age) times native tribal communities thrived in the southwestern tropical coast of India where they exploited the rich plant and animal resources of this region. In the dim prehistoric past they must have discovered the unique properties of the tiny spicy fruits of the Black Pepper vine, using it to flavor and improve the palatability of other wild foods they exploited.
These early hunting gathering communities eventually engaged in early agriculture, fishing, and trade with more urbanized communities in northern India. By as early as 2000 BCE these southwestern coastal communities were trading fish and local forest products such as wild pepper collected from forest vines for decorative bread, ceramics and metals with more complex highly urbanized communities of northern India viz the Indus Valley Community which thrived in northern Inda from about 3000BC to 1800BC.
The Indus Valley Community of northern India used pepper from the Malabar Coast as a food additive and taste-intensifying agent as well as a preservative. From the Indus Valley culture peppercorns soon found their way to the Middle East and then to Egypt and on to Greece and Rome.
In Egypt its properties as a food spice were less important, but its other chemical properties as an anti-fungal, antibacterial and larvacide were put to work by Egyptian mortuary cult practitioners, priests and embalmers. When the tomb of Ramses II, was discovered by archaeologists in the in the early 20th century, the entombed Pharaoh was found to have peppercorns stuffed in his nasal passages. These probably served as an antibacterial and anti-fungal agent.
In 4th century Greece pepper was known as a rare luxury imported from India and used as a medicine and as a food seasoning. It was also claimed as an antidote to poison Hemlock (though there is no substantive proof of this claim). It also had uses as a veterinary aphrodisiac to encourage mating in sheep and goats. (An allegation from 19th century Sweden suggests that black pepper was spread on the wooden dance floors to rise in a heat generating cloud on human tissues and stimulate female body parts.) For these above reasons it was in demand as an expensive luxury and status symbol.
It was during the Roman Republic and later during the Empire that pepper was in greatest demand as both a seasoning and a luxury status symbol. Black pepper was used as a seasoning ingredient in 3/4 of the recipes described by ancient Roman epicures such as Apicius . Historians estimate that during 1st and 2nd centuries AD Rome imported 130 metric tonnes of black pepper annually. These massive amounts created storage problems in Rome. Eventually specialized warehouses for pepper were built just outside of the Roman Forum in the heart of the City.
In 410 AD Alaric, King of Visigoths surrounded Rome and threatened to sack the City if his ransom demands were not met. These included a large payment in gold and as well 3,000 lbs of black pepper.
By the Middle Ages, Arab and Venetian merchants dominated the maritime trade routes to India’s Malabar Coast via the Arabian Sea route through the Straits of Hormuz into the Red Sea to Alexandria and then north in the Mediterranean into the Adriatic and to Venice. During this proud other spices with similar chemical and physiological responses where added to the demand for spices.
WHAT DROVE THE SPICE TRADE
What drove the explorers of the Age of Discovery to commit to such arduous dangerous journeys?
Pepper and other similar common food spices such as Black Pepper, Ginger, Cardamom, Turmeric, Cinnamon and others do have certain things in common with addictive or recreational drugs. Like recreational drugs, food spices contain physiological active chemical compounds which can interact with the human nervous system. Compounds in Black Pepper and Cinnamon have the ability to bind to certain receptors which can affect human mood and also have anti-inflammatory and pain reducing effects..but produce no emotional “high”.
Both piperine and capsaicin (from chili peppers) activate receptors which can release endorphins which can create the feeling of satiety, calm, and mental positivity. These chemical properties are relatively minor as compared to recreational and medicinal psychoactive drugs but can have relatively powerful effects on people who live close to nature, have few food or drink stimulant sources and consume basic unaltered foods. Furthermore, spices used as a seasoning alter a basic human sense—taste- and in higher doses may even alter human physiology and mood. It was these effects which generated such great demand and initiated and maintained the intensity of the spice trade.
Similar to the effects of “recreational drugs”, spices are sourced from exotic locales, or from distant often tropical climates. These geographic] restrictions on access impact the supply side of the supply vs demand relationship, cause unfulfilled demand and thus can elevate prices and their market value.
The laws of supply and demand control cost. Recreational or “club” drugs, are a prime example of the economics of high-value, high-demand products. As noted above recreational drugs are sourced in exotic locations where persistent disruptions or barriers between producer and consumer often occur. Distance to market, danger to traders, and/or barriers to sale such as legal prohibition all can decrease supply and increase prices. These “barriers” make illicit drugs enormously profitable . As a typical example cocaine, may cost $1,500/kg to produce in South America’s Columbian jungles, but will sell in urban New York or San Francisco for $70,000/kg —an almost 5,000% profit over costs.
To provide an example of how enormously profitable the spice trade was in the Age of Discovery. Dutch investors and stock holders of the Dutch East India Company (which focused on the spice trade) in the 1500s expected profits of at least 400%. But local suppliers of spices made unimaginable profits on spices even greater than our modern drug-trade profits.
As spices moved from its tropical source in one nation to transporters, to sea-faring traders, and to various importers and distributors in several nations and locations each trader added a hefty markup in price. Thus a 10lb package of nutmeg might cost one British penny (1 p) in a local market in the Banda Islands of Indonesia, but after passing though several nations and different traders, sell in London for two British pounds 10 pence (L 2 10p)for a markup of about *50,000%. Thus the potential percent profit over costs in trading spices such as nutmeg or pepper in the 1500-1600 could be as much as ten times greater than the enormous profits which drive the modern drug trade values (such as nutmeg or pepper) had about ten times higher profits over that of the modern drug trade (Note cocaine profit cited above.)
Not to ignore the fact that much of the high human demand for neuroactive drugs lies with the fact that regular use often causes addiction of consumers, leaving them physiologically dependent upon their next “hit”. Some elements of this phenomenon apply to use of spices.
*Alkaloids are organic, nitrogen bearing compounds with carbon atoms arranged in one or more hexagonal (or pentagonal) rings. This class of organic chemicals —alkaloids—are common physiologically active plant chemicals widely produced by many different plants: Coffee plants produce the alkaloid caffeine , nicotine is an alkaloid produced by tobacco plants, morphine from the opium poppy, cocaine from cocoa leaves, etcetera.
*(Note: Before the British decimalized the pound in 1971 a pound (L) was worth @ 240 pennies or pence—it varied some over time.)
Early in the Paleozoic Era about 425million years ago (mya) (in the Silurian Period) a watershed event in the Earth’s evolution occurred when Thalophytes, simple green plants with no roots stems or leaves adapted to life on land by developing vascular tissues. Thalophytes include sea weed, algae, fungi, moss, slime molds, lichens. As green plants they produced their own food (photosynthetically combining water and carbon dioxide in the presence of sun light to produce simple sugars). The advent of vascular tissues in green plants created a huge competative advantage for these plants over the plants without these tissues.
Vascular plants adapted vascular tissues as support tissues which permitted the plant to carry its food generating organs (leaves) upward into the sunlight where it could more effectively compete for light and space.
Vascular Plants (or Trachyophytes) were no longer confined to oceans, lakes and marsh lands. Their adaptations permitted them to colonize the expanding areas of upland environments. They could access water from moist ground and carry it aloft by way of rigid transport tissues (xylem which carries water up to the leaves) and thus could out-grow their competitors which were limited to either life within water or on the Earth’s damp surface. Vascular plants became immensely successful. Only 40 my later, or in the Devonian Period @ 385mya, forests of early vascular tree like plants or early Archeophytes. (See: Cairo, NY fossil Archeopteris forest)
The new ability to rise upward toward the sunlight and yet continue to access water (essential for photosyntheses) by way of roots in the ground gave trachyophytes great advantages over other forms of plant life. But this benefit came with a disadvantage. Rooted plants can not physically move to evade or mitigate stress, unfavorable physical conditions, insect attacks, bacterial or viral diseases, or the depredations of herbivores.
Rooted plants had to turn to morphological changes (spines, scales) and chemical responses to deal with these threats to survival. Over vast periods of time (hundreds of millions of years) vascular plants evolved uncounted and marvelous chemical responses to these threats such as: sticky latex to gum up spiracles of insects, salicylates, tannins, essential oils (cedar oil), and alkaloids, and uncounted others all to deal with these threats to their survival.
Each of these chemical substances were produced by plants as a means of avoiding, controlling, preventing or discouraging bacterial, insect or herbivore attacks or infestations and environmental stress.
Ι have a great affinity for black pepper (Piper nigrum). I use it with enthusiasm on almost any food. I grind it fresh over meat, eggs, entrees, and pastas often with abandon. I enjoy it black, white (more fragrant and a little less pungent) and with white pepper those tell tale little black dots are not visible). There is red—black pepper too (not to be confused with pepperconcino the Italian red pepper, not related to P.nigrum). Other folk near me at dinner may suffer with my use of pepper. The fine particles can be lofted up over a steaming plate of spaghetti algli e oligio, to drift into the air space of my less “pro-pepper” colleagues and dinner guests.
The tiny particulates can and often do elict paroxysms of sneezing in these innocents. When this occurs I slink off away from table to avoid conflict. Later, encountering these teary eyed and redfaced victims of my excess, I am accused of being addicted to pepper. I wondered about this. Can a simple spice like pepper be addictive?
Those fragrant little black “bbs”with a dark gray rugose outer surface skin, or the more common ground black pepper are an ubiquitous occurrence on almost every family dinner and restaurant table and presence where food is served and in almost all modern cuisines. Black Pepper, derived from, the tiny fruit of a tropical vine, has been used as a food flavoring agent for more than four thousand years. But what makes it so popular and until recently so expensive?
But, like many modern drugs, plant growth was restricted to a tropical humid climate—and could not be grown in Europe. Furthermore, its actual origin was unknown and for a long time, this information was kept as a trade secret to limit its exploitation. In addition for these reasons even its mode of cultivation was unknown in Europe. Its climatic and soil requirements made it impossible to cultivate in Europe. Thus it was a commodity in high demand, but due to its unknown exotic (distant) origin and inability to grow locally its supply in the market place (which trickled in via circuitous and lengthy trades routes) was very limited. The law of supply and demand applied. Its like modern illcit drugs, pepper’s exotic nature, high demand and its rarity enormously fueled its value.
