New fossil evidence shows prehistoric people from southern Peru up to the Bahamas were cultivating varieties of chilies millennia before Columbus' arrival brought the spice to world cuisine.

The earliest traces so far are from southwestern Ecuador, where families fired up meals with homegrown peppers about 6,100 years ago.

The journal Science reported, that early New World agriculture was more sophisticated than once thought.

"Some people who have described ancient food ways as being simple will probably have to rethink their ideas because of this work," said lead researcher Linda Perry of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

It tells us a lot about what was going on around the prehistoric hearth..

Archaeologists trace food origins not just from curiosity about the ancients' everyday lives. How a crop spreads sheds light on prehistoric travel and trade. In the Middle East, figs were domesticated 11,400 years ago. Wheat wasn't far behind. In the New World, corn was being cultivated around 9,000 years ago.

The microfossils suggest vitamin C-rich chilies were usually mixed with corn and a few other foods, not just used as a spice.