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Curry recipes were first brought to Southeast Asia about 2,000 years ago, according to a new study that uncovers the oldest evidence of the spice culinary industry outside the Indian subcontinent.
The findings, recently published in the journal Science Advances, shed more light on the role of the global spice industry in shaping world history.
In the research, archaeologists, in addition to those from the Australian National University, analyzed plant remains on the surface of stone grinding equipment discovered in Vietnam.
At the Funan-era archaeological site in southern Vietnam called “Óc Eo,” researchers recovered grinding slabs as well as mortars and majas that resemble early South Asian stone equipment used for curry preparation.
“The artifacts analyzed correspond to archaeological and classical Indian spice grinding tools, designed for the flavors and flavors that characterize other spices,” the scientists wrote in the study.
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They may simply hint at those leftovers in spices sourced from South Asia and Indonesia, which are part of the trendy South Asian curry.
South Asia has been a source of spices for the civilizations of Asia and Europe for over 4000 years.
Spices such as nutmeg and cloves from Indonesia also played an important role in the maritime spice industry in the Founan era (~65-580 AD) by serving as an industrial center between South Asia and China.
It is also known that the expansion in the use of spices as preservatives and flavoring agents for food triggered the era of colonization of Eastern Europe.
However, direct biological evidence for the culinary use of spices in South and Southeast Asia in this era of history and in earlier eras has been limited, according to the researchers.
Due to the lack of such evidence, it is transparent whether, or how, those spices may have been used in Southeast Asian cuisine at the time.
They analyzed 717 starch grains, pollen and traces of silica from plant tissue discovered on the surface of 12 of those tools.
The researchers had to identify remains of rice and spices whose origins basically date back to South Asia and Indonesia.
These are turmeric, ginger, roots, ginger sand, galangal, cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon.
The researchers said the new findings constitute some of the first evidence of the use of many of these spices and curry making in Southeast Asia.
“We recommend that immigrants or visitors from South Asia brought this culinary culture to Southeast Asia, the era of the industry’s first contacts across the Indian Ocean, which began about 2000 years ago,” the scientists wrote.
The Independent