Gathering honey in prehistoric times This rock painting, found in the Spider Cave at Valencia, Spain, dates back to about 8000 BCE and appears to show two people raiding a wild beehive The leader (enlarged at right) may be carrying a basket for the honeycomb Artificial hives and the domestication of bees are known from about 2500 BCE in Egypt (Redrawn from H Ransome, The Sacred Bee, 1937.) The History of Sugars and Confectionery Before Sugar: Honey After mother’s milk, the first significant source of sweetness in human experience must have been fruits Some warm-climate fruits like the date can approach a sugar content of 60%, and even temperate fruits become very sweet when they dry out But the most concentrated natural source of sweetness is honey, the stored food of certain species of bees, which reaches 80% sugars It’s clear from a remarkable painting in the Spider Cave of Valencia that humans have gone out of their way to collect honey for at least 10,000 years The “domestication” of bees probably goes back 4,000 years, judging by Egyptian hieroglyphs that show clay hives However our ancestors obtained it, honey came to represent pleasure and fulfillment to them, and is a prominent metaphor in some of the earliest literature we know A love poem inscribed 4,000 years ago on a Sumerian clay tablet describes a bridegroom as “honeysweet,” the bride’s caress as “more ... become very sweet when they dry out But the most concentrated natural source of sweetness is honey, the stored food of certain species of bees, which reaches 80% sugars It’s clear from a remarkable painting in the Spider Cave... from a remarkable painting in the Spider Cave of Valencia that humans have gone out of their way to collect honey for at least 10,000 years The “domestication” of bees probably goes back 4,000 years, judging by Egyptian...After mother’s milk, the first significant source of sweetness in human experience must have been fruits Some warm-climate fruits like the date can approach a sugar content of 60%, and even temperate fruits