While the technique of pit cooking is pretty much universal, nearly every food historian posits that the origin of Barbeque is the Caribbean and a combination of native and African influences during the colonial period. I'm willing to accept that. The word itself is Spanish if that tells you anything. If you look at how Barbeque spread and where it's distributed, even today, a Caribbean origin is the most likely. Considering how many Southern enslaved people came from or through the Caribbean, it kind of seals the deal.
What about Barbeque Sauce, though? Traditional food history says that Jamaican Jerk Sauce is the most likely origin of Barbeque sauce, which makes sense, but here's my issue: the principal ingredients of Barbecue Sauce are tomatoes, chilis, and some form of acid. Traditionally, the acid is vinegar, but let's assume that the acid might originally have been citrus, maybe limes, but what about a pre-Columbian acid, like passionfruit juice?
Here's what I'm getting at: all of the main Barbeque sauce ingredients are pre-Columbian and originate in central and south America, not the Caribbean. I don't believe that Mole sauce is colonial in origin, the name might be, but I refuse to believe it was the first time somebody used a molcajete to grind chiles into a sauce.
Here's my theory, and I'm not a professional, so don't beat me up. If you want a professional opinion, ask George Bey or David Woodward. I think Barbeque Sauce is much older than Carribian Barbacoa. I think the people pit cooking in the Carribian already knew of the sauce. They inherited it from Central and South American ancient sources and had been putting it on meat for generations. If you look at the development of chiles and tomatoes and ceviche and the molcajete, you have all the essential ingredients of Barbeque sauce, and they all pre-date Columbus by thousands of years. Surely they weren't waiting for the arrival of Europeans to put it all together.
