Pomegranate. A global history

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The pomegranate bush raises its voice (tiny, insistent, and shrill): ‘My seeds shine like the teeth of my mistress, the shape of my fruit is round like her breasts. I’m her favourite, I know, sweetest tree in the orchard, looking my best through every season.’

Turin Papyrus, Egyptian, 12th century BC

The pomegranate is an unusual, alluring and ornamental fruit. Even though it can be rather awkward to eat, throughout human history it has remained a most desirable talismanic food item. Those who first wrote of the pomegranate, in ancient Mesopotamia, called it nurma, but for us its name derives from the Latin pomum (apple) and granatum (seeded). It is from the fruit’s distinctive shape, colour and seeds that its universal aesthetic appeal originates. The pomegranate embodies beauty, mystery and the female. Its evocative red juice has often been likened to blood.

One of the oldest foods in the world, the pomegranate seems to have come to us originally from the region that is now modern Iran, wild varieties being born of the bio-diverse Kopet Dag mountain range. It was first domesticated during the Neolithic Revolution, which began around 10,000 BC; human selection meant that the pomegranate took on appealing qualities it did not have in the wild. The pomegranate makes its first archaeological appearance at the start of the third millennium BC, in the form of carbonized pomegranate seeds excavated at the Middle Eastern sites of Jericho, Arad and Nimrud.[1] In addition to the pomegranate (Punica granatum), the genus Punica contains one other species. The rare Punica protopunica is a precursor from which the common pomegranate may derive. It is found only on the island of Socotra off the coast of Yemen. P. protopunica is generally not eaten, however, as it is rather bitter.

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