Popcorn is 6,700 years old!

They may not have had cinema theatres or television sets, but ancient Peruvians did share one part of our modern movie-watching culture — munching popcorns.

Researchers have found evidence that suggests communities living along the coast of Peru were eating popcorns some 6,700 years ago, about 1,000 years earlier than previously estimated — even predating the use of ceramic pottery.

Peru's northern coast

They arrived this conclusion after unearthing corn husks, stalks, cobs and tassels (pollen-producing flowers on corn) dating from 6,700 to 3,000 years ago at Paredones and Huaca Prieta, two sites on Peru's northern coast.

“The evidence was unearthed during the past three years,” study researcher Dolores Piperno, curator of New World archaeology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, told LiveScience.

The characteristics of the corncobs suggest that the sites' ancient inhabitants prepared and ate corn in several ways, including making corn flour and popcorn, Piperno said.

Silicon dioxide

The researchers also found corn microfossils containing starch grains and phytoliths, which are microscopic particles formed by plants and mainly composed of silicon dioxide.

The Peruvian popcorn is the oldest macrofossil evidence for popcorn in South America. Despite the presence of these corn products, corn was still not an important part of the ancient people's diet, the researchers reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Wild grass

Piperno said: “Corn was first domesticated in Mexico nearly 9,000 years ago from a wild grass called teosinte,”

“Our results show that only a few thousand years later, corn arrived in South America, where its evolution into different varieties that are now common in the region began.

“This evidence further indicates that, in many areas, corn arrived before pots did, and that early experimentation with corn as a food was not dependent on the presence of pottery.”

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