Hot Enough For Ya?

Last week archaeologists reported in the journal Science that they had found traces of domesticated chili peppers on 6,000-year-old cooking utensils used in South and Central America, suggesting that New World cuisine was more sophisticated than once imagined. "It looks like people have liked spicy food for a very long time," says lead researcher Linda Perry of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Which of course raises the question: Just how spicy did they like it? In Scoville Heat Units—a measure of capsaicinoids, the chemicals that give food "heat"—the picante peppers of prehistoric Peru pale in comparison with today's hottest chilies.

1,001,304 SHUs
New Mexico State University's Chile Pepper Institute last week certified the Bhut Jolokia, or "ghost chili," from India as the hottest ever tested. By comparison, most pepper sprays come in at 2 to 5 million SHUs.

923,000 SHUs
In 2005, Michael and Joy Michaud of Dorset, England, shattered the Scoville record with the Dorset Naga, cultivated from a Bangladeshi pepper; it was potent enough for handlers to require gloves.

577,000 SHUs
At more than 60 times the spiciness of a jalapeño, the Red Savina habanero, developed in California, is twice as hot as other habaneros and was until recently considered the world's hottest chili.

50,000 SHUs
Perry calls the rocoto pepper, at left, a "modern variety" of the Capsicum pubescens identified by her team. The ancient chilies likely spiced up maize and root stew but were probably no hotter than cayenne peppers.