Watermelon History: Watermelon eaten in the summer season is full of sweetness and freshness. It also provides relief from heat. Just like everything in the world has its own history, similarly the history of watermelon is also very interesting. Have you ever thought that from where this fruit which makes up for the lack of water in the body came from? Where did it originate in the first place? Let us know where the watermelon originated.
Where did watermelon come from?
Watermelon originated in the fertile land of ancient Mesopotamia. Which we know today as Iraq. Botanist Susan Rainer and her team at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, after genetic sequencing of domesticated watermelons named Citrullus lanetus, reported that the genomes of domestic watermelons and wild watermelons found in Sudan are very similar. However, Sudan’s watermelons are not red, they are white and they are not very sweet either. They are generally used as animal feed. A research report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says that Sudan’s watermelon may have been the ancestor of Iraq’s watermelon.
Where did the red color come from?
It is possible that in the olden times farmers would have grown a sweet variant of wild watermelon. Which kept getting sweeter from generation to generation. But Susan Renner’s team has no idea how it came about the red color inside the watermelon.
According to Susan Rainer, the reason for this can also be geographical conditions. Because 3300 years ago, during the burial of King Tutankhamun of Egypt, watermelon seeds were also buried with him. But this is not a solid proof of the color and sweetness of watermelon.
Evidence of watermelon is also found in Egypt
One day Susan saw a 4300-year-old painting on an ancient Egyptian dome, in which a watermelon was made. Sujan told that this painting was discovered only in 1912. In this, along with other fruits, watermelon has also been cut and decorated in a plate.
Revealed by painting
After studying this painting, Susan Rainer suggested that domesticated red and sweet watermelons may have originated in Egypt. Which was spread everywhere in his empire sometimes through trade and sometimes as gifts. The ancient Nubians of Sudan were part of the Egyptian Empire. It is possible that they would have developed and traded domestic watermelons.
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