Sugarcane’s perishability and labor demands confined it to elite local use for millennia

Evidence

None of this was in any way foreordained, or even predictable. For thousands of years, sugarcane was a heavy and unwieldy crop that had to be cut by hand and immediately ground to release the juice inside; otherwise it would spoil within a day or two. Even before harvesttime, rows had to be dug, stalks planted, and plentiful wood chopped as fuel for boiling the liquid and reducing it to crystals and molasses. From the earliest traces of cane domestication on the Pacific island of New Guinea ten thousand years ago to its island-hopping advance to ancient India in 350 B.C., sugar was locally consumed and remained little more than an exotic spice, medicinal glaze, or sweetener for elite palates. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 268