Proof that chillies were used in recipes 6,000 years ago

Chilli peppers have been deemed the oldest-known kitchen condiment after scientists found evidence that people were cooking with them more than 6,000 years ago.

An archaeological study has found that hot chillis were being added to bland food long before the pyramids were built.

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Scientists found that the first people to cook with chillis lived in the lowland areas of Ecuador but the spicy vegetable soon spread through south and central America before going global with the Spanish conquistadors.

Linda Perry of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington solved the problem of decaying vegetable matter leaving scant evidence when she found peppers could be identified from fossilised grains of starch. Starch grains from chilli peppers were then found alongside remnants of corn, yucca, squash, beans and palm fruit, suggesting ancient recipes designed to make a taste more palatable. The oldest starch grains from chilli peppers were from two sites in Ecuador dating to 6,100 years ago, but grains were also found as far as the Bahamas, Panama and Peru.

Starch of the peppers in other sites ranged from about 5,600 to 500 years old. Under a microscope, the grains appeared as large, flattened disks with shallow central depressions, significantly different to starch grains from other foods. The study is published today in the journal Science.