Honey: A sweet Maya legacy
>> Friday, July 10, 2009
From an article by Karen Hursh Graber on MexConnect:
When we first came to Mexico many years ago, a trip to the market was cause for both excitement and apprehension for my then ten-year-old younger daughter. There were beautiful things, like fragrant flowers and bundles of bright green herbs, as well as "yucky" things, like the heads of freshly slaughtered pigs. But one thing that would always motivate her to come and help carry bags was the promise of a piece of honeycomb from the honey vendor. Dripping with its sweet golden syrup, the honeycomb was savored until its waxy symmetry had been reduced to something resembling a wad of Chiclets.
Honey has always been a nearly universally treasured food, visually appealing, delicious to taste, and nutritionally valuable. A fluid produced by bees and derived from the nectar of flowers, it has been used to describe everything from sweetness to sensuality, and even as a metaphor for goodness. The Book of Proverbs tells us that "Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones," and "the land of milk and honey" described a place of rest and plenty that awaited the desert wanderers.
It was also mentioned in sacred texts of India and Egypt, and in Sumerian and Babylonian cuniform writings dating as far back as 2100 BC. It has been widely used, at various times and in diverse places, as currency, tribute and offering. It was used in Europe in food, fermented beverages, furniture polish, varnish, and for medicinal purposes.
Here in Mexico, the Maya people of the Yucatan have practiced beekeeping for thousands of years. The ancient Maya considered the stingless melliponine bee (Apidae melliponinae), native to the tropical forests of the Yucatan peninsula, to be a link to the spirit world, given to them by the bee god, Ah Muzen Cab.
