Quite simply, this is
hard evidence that cinnamon was transported to the Levant 3000 years ago or
just at the end of what we are describing as the Atlantean Age which spanned
2500 BC to 1159 BC. In its maturity, the
Atlantean Age was a global concern system of palace based trade factories underwritten
by the copper trade itself. The global
establishment itself took place around 2400 BC.
Thus a good thousand years of fairly unrestricted interchange took place
although the enterprise bred serious piracy.
As we have learned, it
takes time for the hard evidence such as this to appear and be noted. This will slowly fill in the conjectural
blanks. It is one thing to understand
that a global sea based society had to exist and quite another to prove that it
was so although; we are really doing pretty well.
The good news is that cinnamon
is a traceable marker that can be preserved and detected. Thus it can be used to map that trade fairly
well. Unfortunately, it may well have
not been an overly traded good. Finding it
in the Levant merely confirms the importance of the district as an entrepot
that collected goods from everywhere for selling on.
Evidence of
3,000-Year-Old Cinnamon Trade Found in Israel
August
20, 2013
\
How
far would you go to get your cinnamon fix? If you lived in the Levant 3,000
years ago (a region that includes modern day Israel), very far indeed new
research indicates.
Researchers
analyzing the contents of 27 flasks from five archaeological
sites in Israel that date back around 3,000 years have found that 10
of the flasks contain cinnamaldehyde, the compound that gives cinnamon its
flavor, indicating that the spice was stored in these flasks.
At
this time cinnamon was found in the Far East with the closest places to Israel
being southern India and Sri Lanka located at least 3,000 miles (nearly 5,000
kilometers) away. A form of it was also found in the interior of Africa, but
does not match the material found in these flasks.
This
discovery "raises the intriguing possibility that long-range
spice trade from the Far East westward may have taken place some 3,000
years ago," researchers write in a paper to be published in the journal
Mediterranean Archaeology andArchaeometry. Although cinnamon can be purchased
today at any grocery or bulk food store, 3,000 years ago, people in the Levant
would have needed to take part in trade that extended beyond the edge of the
known world in order to acquire it, something this discovery suggests they were
willing to do.
This
trade may go back ever further into antiquity and involve other goods and parts
of the Middle East. The researchers note, for example, that black pepper from
India has been found in the
mummy of Ramesses II, a pharaoh of Egypt who lived more than 3,200 years
ago.
From
the Far East to Israel
At
the time of this trade, Israel's coastal inhabitants included the Phoenicians,
a people so renowned for their seafaring skills the
ancient writer Herodotus claimed they had succeeded in sailing around
Africa around 600 BC (something scholars are doubtful of today).
But,
while these people were great seafarers, they probably did not sail all the way
to the Far East to get these goods, perhaps instead using intermediaries along
the way.
"We
don't think they sailed directly [to the Far East]; it was a very hard task
even in the 16th century A.D." Dvory Namdar, a researcher with the
Weizmann Institute of Science and Tel Aviv University, told LiveScience in an
interview. Her research colleague Ayelet Gilboa, of the University of Haifa,
also agreed in an interview that it was very doubtful there was a direct
voyage.
They
explained that the flasks that contained cinnamon were made locally in northern
coastal Israel which back then was part of ancient Phoenicia. They appear to
have been designed to hold precious contents, featuring a narrow opening with
thick walls. Flasks like these have been found in special places such as
treasuries and temple storerooms, the researchers noted.
Namdar
and Gilboa explained that the bark from the cinnamon tree would have been
brought in from the Far East in a dry form and, when it reached Phoenicia, was
mixed with some form of liquid and put in these flasks. Then, afterwards it was
shipped all over Phoenicia and also to neighboring regions such as Philistia
(much of which is located in modern day southwest Israel) and Cyprus.
Cinnamon
mixed in wine?
A
further mystery the team faces: What was the cinnamon used for? The cinnamon
from these flasks would have tasted "roughly the same as today,"
Namdar said.
One
possibility, Namdar and Gilboa said, is that people of the time mixed the
cinnamon in with wine, an idea supported by the fact that the flasks were quite
small, whereas wine was stored in bigger containers. "If you mix it with a
bigger [container of wine], then you get flavored wine," they said.
Indeed, cinnamon is often used in wine-based recipes today, including ones for
mulled or spiced wine.
The
project was supported by a European Research Council Advanced Grant.
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