Sugar cane, a large tropical grass, was to retain the monopoly on sweetness for nearly 3,000 years, until the arrival in the nineteenth century of its rival : sugar beet.
Sugar cane originated from New Guinea and its neighbouring islands, and is known to have been cultivated there before 1000 BC. From there, it set out on a long journey that would take it first to India and then to China.
People still had to work out how to extract the sugar: The Indians devised the first techniques for converting cane into sugar. They also gave it a name “sarkara”. This Sanskrit term is the origin all the European words for sugar (sucre, Zucker, zuccheto, azúcar, etc.).
It was in India, between the sixth and fourth centuries BC, that the Persians, followed by the Greeks, found the famous “reeds that produce honey without bees” and brought it to the West. A few merchants began to trade in sugar but cultivation was still confined to India.