Seasonings That Moved the World

Garlic starts the path at the deepest date: charred bulb fragments and storage pits place its domestication in Central Asia, with the earliest confirmed direct evidence at Djarkutan in modern Uzbekistan, about 4000 BCE. From that mountain region it became an aromatic base for nearly every continent.

Ginger has no known wild form: every plant in cultivation descends from rhizome cuttings, so its exact origin is lost. Scholars place it in India or in Maritime Southeast Asia, where Austronesian-speaking peoples are thought to have carried it with them as they spread across the region.

Salt is the one mineral among these stops, and its history is a history of control. Rome's Via Salaria carried it inland from pans near the Tiber, and Saharan salt moved south by camel caravan to trading cities such as Timbuktu. The story that Roman soldiers were paid in salt is a documented myth.

Turmeric is a rhizome from the ginger family, cultivated in India for millennia, with evidence of its use in the archaeology of the Indus Valley Civilization. Its compound curcumin supplies the deep yellow-orange color, and it serves in Ayurvedic medicine, Hindu ritual and curry powder blends as it spread to Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

Cumin seeds turn up in Egyptian archaeological sites about four thousand years old, where the spice was used in cooking and in mummification. It is named in the Hebrew Bible and crossed the ancient Mediterranean, and after Spanish colonization it became a defining spice in Mexico and parts of Latin America.

Black pepper grew only on the Malabar Coast of India, yet peppercorns were packed into the nostrils of the mummified Ramesses II, dated to 1213 BCE. That find is the oldest solid archaeological proof of long distance trade between Malabar and the Mediterranean, three thousand miles away.

Cinnamon is the inner bark of trees native to Sri Lanka and the Malabar coast, and ancient traders deliberately obscured its source to protect their monopoly, which bred fanciful tales of where it came from. Its value helped drive the spice trade that eventually motivated European voyages to find direct sea routes to Asia.

Sugarcane was domesticated in New Guinea and chewed raw for thousands of years before boiling cane juice into solid sugar developed in India. After Columbus carried cane to the Caribbean in 1493, sugar became a plantation commodity whose demand is credited with driving the Atlantic slave trade.

The chili pepper closes the path as the reverse case: native to the Americas and unknown elsewhere before European contact, it spread with extraordinary speed after the Columbian Exchange. Within a few centuries it was so naturalized in Asian and African cuisines that several are now unimaginable without it. It is unrelated to black pepper.