141 Sugar has been making life sweeter for people since New Guinea residents first domesticated sugar cane more than 10,000 years ago. While the earliest historical records come from China, it appears that early sugar innovations were centered in India. Around 500 B.C., Indians made cooled sugar syrup called khanda, whose name lives on in our word candy. Cultivation of sugar cane spread throughout the East over the following centuries, and to the Muslim world by the 9th and 10th centuries A.D. When the crusaders arrived in the Middle East, they discovered a substance they called “sweet salt,” and eagerly brought it home. This new alternative to honey spawned a transportation industry, as merchants traveled between Europe and the East to obtain sugar and other spices. U.S. and Global Reach