A few thousand years ago, sugar was unknown in the western world. Sugarcane, a tall grass first domesticated in New Guinea around 6000BC, was initially chewed for its sweet juice rather than crystallised. By around 500BC, methods to boil sugarcane juice into crystals was first developed in India.
One of the earliest references to sugar we have dates to 510BC, when Emperor Darius I of what was then Persia invaded India. There he found “the reed which gives honey without bees”.
