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Surely our schoolchildren are taught this and it is preached from the pulpits and cried from the rooftops.
But I had missed it until I heard Lake E. High Jr. of Columbia share it with Anthony Bourdain when he traipsed his "No Reservations" television show through Sweatman's Bar-b-Que restaurant between Holly Hill and Eutawville.
Sweatman's is the holy of holies of barbecue, a smoky twist of heaven on earth. The two gentlemen on TV got instant credibility for picking that spot to discuss the juices and bacon grease and belly layers that define the joys of a whole hog cooked all night over wood coals.
I knew about Sweatman's, but I did not know that barbecue originated in a place we call today Parris Island. It was in the Santa Elena colony overlooking our beautiful Port Royal Sound.
"The Indians had the cooking method, and the Spaniards had the pig," High said.
Many of you have been led to believe that barbecue came from North Carolina, Kansas City or Memphis. Don't even say Texas. This is, of course, propaganda.
North Carolina lays claim to the first barbecue restaurant. So be it. If John Shelton Reed and Dale Volberg Reed say it's so in their new book, "Holy Smoke," it must be true.
But as High told me by phone, that's not to be confused with the advent of barbecue.
"That's like saying waffles were invented in Atlanta in 1955 when the first Waffle House opened," he said.
High is president and a charter member of the South Carolina Barbeque Association, and a certified South Carolina Barbeque Judge. Beyond that, he is a student of history, geography, food, ethnic migration and all the other ingredients that go into barbecue.
He notes that South Carolina is the only state serving up all four types of barbecue sauce: vinegar and pepper (the original), mustard sauce (from our German immigrants), light tomato sauce (a little ketchup in the original), and heavy tomato sauce.
But it was here in Beaufort County "that the white man first learned to prepare and to eat real barbeque," High writes in "A Very Brief History of the Four Types of Barbeque Found in the USA."
"So, people were eating barbeque in South Carolina even before that name had been applied to the area by the English."
Santa Elena was shuttered when the Spaniards pulled up stakes. But it should be remembered for taking that one delicious leap for mankind.
