Honey In Historic Times

Honey In Historic Times


WE DERIVE our knowledge of the earliest use and importance of honey in historic times from archives of the ancient cultural states, Babylon, Assyria, Persia, India, Egypt, Greece and Rome. The oldest existing scripts corroborate the fact that bees were already domesticated creatures and honey was extensively used for food, drink, medicine and exclusively for sweetening purposes. Honey was an important commodity. Taxes and tributes were imposed in the form of payments of honey and wax. It was equivalent to currency. Today, in the twentieth century, we could understand the vital importance of honey in the domestic life of bygone ages only if we were forced to relinquish completely the use of industrial sugar. This would overload the imagination of even a most daring dreamer.

We do not know of any people on earth, including savage tribes, who did not cultivate bees for their honey with the exception of the native Indians of the Americas and the Australian indigenes. Honeybees were unknown to them and they obtained their scanty supply of honey from stingless bees.

Before parchment, paper and writing were invented, pictorial engravings on stones conveyed the meaning of human conceptions. Geometric ideography was the first attempt of antiquity to express and perpetuate thoughts on lapidary specimens. Animals and plants were later objects and finally, anthropomorphic images. We find most petroglyphic carvings in Egypt, India, Mexico and Peru.