Once upon a time, the Taino Indians of Jamaica got hungry, and they used the sweet wood of the allspice tree to cook meat over a slow fire. The wood they used was called barbacoa. That’s where the word barbecue comes from.
When Spaniards arrived in Jamaica in the 1490s, they enslaved the Indians and brought them to near extinction in about 50 years. African slaves were brought in to replace them.
In the 1650s, escaped slaves joined the remaining Taino in the forests and tried to fight the British and Spanish for control. The slaves learned how to preserve meat with spices because they didn’t know when their next meal might be. They shared with the Taino their method of smoking food in pits dug into the earth.
Barbecue has survived for more than 350 years from these humble origins.
Thanks New York Times!