It’s the year 1702. You want to eat something sweet. What are your options? Can you hit up Whole Foods for xylitol or agave? Nope. You don’t even have table sugar. But if you’re lucky, and it’s the right time of year, you might get a little bit of honey.
Honey has been humans’ main sweetener for thousands of years. People didn’t really have sugar until intercontinental trade in the 18th century made cane sugar available.
Honeybees, which originated in Africa, have probably been around for 100 million years. So it’s no surprise that nearly every world culture uses honey.
For instance:
Honey appears in Spanish cave paintings about 10-15,000 years old (see image below). Honey is part of Buddhist rituals and traditional Indian and Chinese medicine. Honey is mentioned often in the Jewish Talmud (honeybees are not kosher, but honey is), the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, and the Koran. In fact, the word honey appears 56 times in the King James version of the Bible; Biblical references to “the land of milk and honey,” probably refer to Tel Rehov, one of the most important cities in Israel and a beekeeping center. Bees and honey appear in Egyptian hieroglyphics (see image below). Ancient Greeks revered honey. The Greek physician Hippocrates used honey to treat skin ailments, while the philosopher Aristotle thought honey was deposited from the atmosphere.. Honey was used for mead – the first known alcoholic drink in mythology. Old Scandinavian texts, such as the Kalevala, the ancient Finnish epic poem, also refer to honey. The term honeymoon originated with the Norse practice of consuming large quantities of mead during the first month of a marriage. This practice was believed to ensure fertility during the lunar cycle. In 1866 Franz von Hruschka invented the first device to extract honey from the honeycomb using centrifugal force (after watching milkmaids swinging buckets).
In modern times, honey is often used in Middle Eastern/Mediterranean, African, northern and southern European cuisine.
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