Identifying the Central Idea
What is the central idea of the passage?
The Italian merchants sometimes sailed across the
Mediterranean Sea to Syria, where they could buy black
pepper that had been grown on the southwest coast of
India. The tiny dried black peppercorns were the perfect
item to trade, because the small ships of the time could
carry enough to make a nice profit. From India the
pepper was shipped across to Arabia, where camel
caravans would carry it all the way to Syria. The Italians
could purchase enough pepper in Syria to carry with
them to the next Champagne fair. Every count whose
cook added the bite of costly black pepper to his food
knew he was getting a taste of far distant lands. As late as
1300, Jean de Joieville, a French writer who had actually
lived in the Muslim world, still believed that these spices
came from the outer edges of the Garden of Eden, located
somewhere along the river Nile. There, people cast their
nets outspread into the river, at night, and when morning
comes, they find in their nets such goods as ... ginger,
In the Middle Ages, spices that are now ordinary
were rare imports from faraway places.
The spices at the Champagne fair were from the
Middle East, where they were used in cooking.
Pepper was highly regarded in Europe, so
merchants demanded more and more of it.
The Champagne fairs relied on a vast trade network
that drove up the prices of new and rare goods.