Popcorn 1,000 Years Older Than Previously Thought

... and you thought the popcorn at your local movie theatre was old.

Twitter informs us this morning that it is National Popcorn Day, because if there was one snackfood that needed more publicity, it was popcorn, we guess? Anyhow, it at least makes for a good segue into the fact that researchers now believe that people were eating popcorn in South America at least a millennium earlier than was previously thought. The new conclusions stem from the discovery of corncobs in Peru dating back 6,700 years. The research team says that the corncobs bore traces consistent with making popcorn and flour, which means popcorn is just about the oldest snack food on the planet. Maize was first domesticated in Mexico about 9,000 years ago before it slowly spread throughout Central and South America.