ABSTRACT
There is no archeological record of when and where humans first began growing sugarcane as a crop, but it most likely happened about 10,000 years ago in what is now New Guinea in the South Pacific. The cultivation of sugarcane moved steadily eastward across the Pacific, spreading to the adjacent Solomon Islands, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia and ultimately to Polynesia. When the Prophet Muhammad began his holy war to convert the world to Islam in ad 632, his followers simultaneously started an agricultural revolution. Year-round planting also required the development of dependable irrigation systems to provide the crops with sufficient water, particularly during dry seasons. When sugar first arrived in the continent from the Near East, honey had been the primary sweetener for thousands of years. The Portuguese ultimately took control of worldwide sugar production in the fifteenth century as an economic by-product of their exploration and colonization of the Atlantic Islands along the African coast.
