Queen Elizabeth I of England was particularly fond of sugar. This was a time of great conquests and explorations to the New World for the royal houses of Europe, accompanied by expanding trade and...
How far did ancient people go to enhance the flavor of their food and drinks? Would they consume toxic substances if it made things a little more appetizing? Well, the Romans did, by adding a sweet...
Love it or hate it, fruitcake has been a winter holiday staple for a long time. You could say the earliest version was a barley, pomegranate seed, nut, raisin, and honeyed wine dessert called satura...
In the 18th and 19th centuries, sugar was considered the ‘white gold’ in the commercial arenas of the world, but it was accrued by the scourge of ‘black gold’ – slave labor. The tiny green emerald...
Ancient DNA recovered from fossils is a valuable tool to study evolution and anthropology. Yet ancient fossil DNA from earlier geological ages has not been found yet in any part of Africa, where it's...
Archaeologists claim that the remains found in a burial site excavated in 2009 in the Canary Islands could be some of the earliest known slave remains in the world. They were originally thought to...
It seems as though no other substance occupies so much of the world’s land, for so little benefit to humanity, as sugar. According to the latest data, sugarcane is the world’s third most valuable...