Black pepper - a perennial vine that can grow to 5 meters - has been cultivating in southern India and Indonesia for 2000 years. The ethimilogy is Latin "piper" which in turn comes from the Sanskrit word "pippali." It is one of the oldest known spices first described by Greek philosopher Theophrastus in the 4th century BC. According to the fifth century Syriac Book of Medicine, black pepper was used to treat diarrohea and fever and enhance other herbs. Ayrveda Materia Medica from 600-300 BC used pepper to balance the body and prevent desease. During the Middle Ages, pepper was widley used to preserve and season meats as well as cover the smell of rancind food; it was also used as antiseptic, analgesic, and sedative. Marco Polo described pepper plantations in Java when he visited in 1280 and India. Controling the spice trade allowed Portugal to dominate for a century, then the Dutch in the seventeeth century, and the US in the eighteenth. The British introduced pepper plants to Malaysia in the nineteenth century.