About four years
ago, I posted a blog about citrus fruit being introduced to the West by the
soldiers of Alexander the Great – a
most gratifying idea (see: What
Alexander did for us). Yet a very recent article published by Dr Dafna
Langgut, head of the Laboratory of Archaeobotany and Ancient Environments at
the Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University in ASOR is shedding a
scientific light on the matter.
According to
this study, citrus originates in Southeast Asia
where it was cultivated as early as 2,000 BC. Eventually the fruit arrived in Persia and from there reached the eastern Mediterranean in the 5th-4th
century BC, so well before Alexander the
Great travelled through the area.
In time, limes,
sour or bitter oranges, and pummelo (a variety of grapefruit) were
added to the varieties and all spread westwards thanks to the Muslim conquests
of Sicily and Spain . Our sweet orange was
a latecomer as we had to wait for it till the 15th century, and the
mandarin was only introduced in the early 19th century.
Well, so much
for the history of citrus fruits but it is clear the it was known to the
Persians when Alexander conquered their
Empire. He must have been confronted
with some variety of citrus as soon as he marched along the eastern basin of
the Mediterranean but that is something we will
never know.
No comments:
Post a Comment