Origin and Early History of the Peanut

The peanut, Arachis hypogaea L., is a native South American legume. Macrofossil and starch grain data show peanuts moved into the Zana Valley in Northern Peru 8500 years ago, presumably from the eastern side of the Andes Mountains, although the hulls found there do not have similar characteristics to modern domestic peanuts. At the time of the discovery of the American and European expansion into the New World, this cultivated species was known and grown widely throughout the tropical and subtropical areas of this hemisphere. The early Spanish and Portuguese explorers found the Indians cultivating the peanut in several of the West Indian Islands, in Mexico, on the northeast and east coasts of Brazil, in the warm land of the Rio de la Plata basin (Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, extreme southwest Brazil), and extensively in Peru. From these regions the peanut was disseminated to Europe, to the coasts of Africa, Asia, and the Pacific Islands. Eventually, the peanut traveled to the colonial seaboard of the present southeastern United States, but the time and place of its introduction was not documented.