In ancient and early medieval times, the Mediterranean did not know sugar; sweetening came from honey and fruit juices. The sugarcane itself had its origin in New Guinea and gradually spread, with human assistance, through Southeast Asia, then gained significance in China and India.
Sugarcane’s early use in Southeast Asia was restricted to chewing and it was cultivated strictly for this purpose. It is believed that the technique of boiling cane juices to make solid sugar was not discovered until the 1st century BC in the Indian subcontinent. Processing technologies remained simple and cultivation was typically on a small scale, for local consumption.
By 325 BC when the armies of Alexander the Great entered the Punjab, they encountered sugar cane.
Although sugar cane possibly known in the holy land in biblical time only syrups could be obtained from it. In the 7th – 10 th centuries AD, the Arabs spread sugarcane throughout their region of influence in the Mediterranean and eastwards.
Previously, the processing of sugar had been done by crushing the cane, extracting the juice, and boiling it down into a black paste.
Sugar was used as a medicinal agent as well as a sweetener. And then the method of adding potash to clarify the sugar in the refining process was invented. The raw sugar is further refined to produce white and other kinds of sugar.
By the 12th century sugarcane reached Europe and Marco Polo reported advanced sugar refining in China toward the end of 13th century.
Sugar cultivation and processing moved into the Atlantic islands of Madeira, the Azores, Cape Verde and Sao Tome, in association the beginning of Portuguese expansion into Africa in the fifteenth century.
The sugar beet extraction was developed late, but sugar cane processing is ancient. When Europeans came to known the product call sugar, it was cane sugar.
The development of the sugar industry from the 16th century onward is closely associated with slavery, which supplied the largest amount of labour used at the time. During the European Renaissance, and for the succeeding two centuries, sugar manufacturing constituted one of the largest pre-modern industrial operations in the world.
Sugar processing during ancient time
