History of red chilli

Chili peppers have been a part of the human diet in the Americassince at least 7500 BC. There is archaeological evidence at sites located in south-westernEcuador that chili peppers were domesticated more than 6000 years ago, and isone of the first cultivated crops in the Central and South Americas that is self-pollinating.
Christopher Columbus was one of the first Europeans to encounterthem (in the Caribbean), and called them "peppers" because they, likeblack and white pepper of the Piper genus known in Europe, have a spicyhot taste unlike other foodstuffs. Upon their introduction into Europe chilieswere grown as botanical curiosities in the gardens of Spanish and Portuguese monasteries.But the monks experimented with the chilis' culinary potential and discoveredthat their pungency offered a substitute for black peppercorns, which at thetime were so costly that they were used as legal currency in some countries.
Chilies were cultivated around the globe after Columbus. DiegoÁlvarez Chanca, a physician on Columbus' second voyage to the West Indies in1493, brought the first chili peppers to Spain, and first wrote about theirmedicinal effects in 1494.
From Mexico, at the time the Spanish colony that controlledcommerce with Asia, chili peppers spread rapidly into the Philippines and thento India, China, Indonesia, Korea and Japan. They were incorporated into thelocal cuisines.
An alternate account for the spread of chili peppers is that thePortuguese got the pepper from Spain, and cultivated it in India. The chilipepper figures heavily in the cuisine of the Goon region of India, which wasthe site of a Portuguese colony (e.g., vindaloo, an Indian interpretation of aPortuguese dish). Chili peppers journeyed from India, through Central Asia andTurkey, to Hungary, where it became the national spice in the form of paprika.