Cochineal farming and carmine dye
Cría de la cochinilla y tinte carmín
- Date
- c. 200 BCE · confidence low
- Place
- Paracas, Pisco, Ica, Peru
- Credited to
- Paracas and Nasca cultures; later the Mixtecs and the Mexica
- Field
- Tools
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Farming the insect Dactylopius coccus on prickly pear cacti to extract carminic acid, an intense and stable red. After 1519 it was New Spain's second export after silver.
Identified in Paracas textiles through dye analysis; cochineal domestication may also, or earlier, have occurred in Oaxaca.
What it led to
- brightly coloured Andean textiles
- the global carmine trade (16th-19th centuries)
- the food colouring E120