When did sugar begin to exist?

Ancient sugar is very different from modern sugar. Most of the sugar in ancient times was caramel, and the main ingredient was malt, also called maltose. There was a custom of offering sacrifices to stoves in the Tang and Song Dynasties. There are honeydew melons in the offerings when offering sacrifices to the stove, so sugar appeared before the Tang Dynasty. In The Book of Songs Daya Mian, it is described that the father of Gu, the ancestor of Zhou people in the late Shang Dynasty, moved to another place, and the word "soft" appeared as early as the Yin and Shang Dynasties.