Clover fossils in Sri Lanka and trade routes with the Arabian Peninsula and the world

Imran Abdullah

The history of the spice trade evokes old images of convoys on the Silk Road in antiquity, as well as the war between the competing European powers for control.

One of the most precious spices of ancient times was the carnation - the immature, multi-use bud of the evergreen carnation, whose origins date back to the Maluku Islands or the Moluccas in the Indonesian archipelago. The clove is famous for its flavor and aroma, as well as its medicinal uses, and it has quickly become important for its use as a refreshing fragrance, fragrance and nutritional flavor.

The carnivorous researchers also found ancient ceramic vessels in Syria, with evidence indicating that they were older than 1700 BC. In the third century BC, a Chinese Han ruler ordered someone to enter the carnation to be himself and his mouth clean.

Cloves were known to Muslim sailors who traded them in the Middle Ages through the Indian Ocean trade routes. Arab traveler Ibn Battuta mentioned the trade of cloves in his book, and the carnival trade was also known in the tales of legendary Arab knights such as Sinbad the Seas who bought cloves from India for commerce.

The oldest clove cloves
The researchers believe they found the world's oldest cloves in excavations in Sri Lanka, specifically at an ancient port dating back to about 200 BC, according to a study published by the London-based University of London author, Eleanor Kingwell-Panham.

It was one of the most important ports in Sri Lanka in the Middle Ages and a gateway to trade with all parts of the ancient world. Not only that, but researchers also found evidence of black pepper, a product of high value in the old spice trade.

Ancient History
The wealth of the people of Sri Lanka was older than their Roman counterparts, and they lived for up to a hundred years. No wonder then that the ancient Sri Lanka attracted commercial vessels not only from the Roman world, but also from Arabia, India and China.

It has sought decades of archaeological excavations to uncover the rich kingdoms of ancient Sri Lanka. Mantay on the northern tip of the Sri Lankan island is one of the colonies of the port of Anuradhapura.

The site has been excavated since the 1980s, and during three seasons of exploration an amazing collection of artifacts, including semi-precious stones and ceramics from India, the Arabian Peninsula, the Mediterranean Sea and China, was discovered.

In 1983, civil war broke out in Sri Lanka, an end to archaeological excavations in the northern province, as well as many other areas of the island. Unfortunately, many records related to this archaeological work are lost or destroyed, including detailed information on how soil layers that were dug together could be used to determine how and when the site evolved and flourished.

Rethinking Mantai
In 2009 and 2010, after the end of the civil war, a team of multinational researchers returned to Mantai and began new exploration work in cooperation with the Sri Lankan Ministry of Antiquities.

The carnations were previously reported in Syria, but have been largely discredited as inaccurate. Carnation was found in Mantai dating from 1100 to 900 BC, making it not only the oldest in Asia, but also the oldest in the world.

Spice Wars
Clove was one of the rarest and most expensive spices in the Roman and Middle Ages. It was not grown in Sri Lanka but came from the Maluku Islands in Southeast Asia (about 7,000 km by sea) to trade to Europe, China or elsewhere through the port of Mantai.

Black pepper was also traded along these routes and was probably cultivated and harvested in western Ghats in India, although it was less rare and valuable than cloves, but it was known as "black gold" because of its value in the early modern period of In 1500 AD to about 1800 AD.

Since the 16th century, Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon) was colonized by various European powers, including the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British, and the country was considered the home of the lucrative spice business.

Regardless of whether the carnation discovered in Mantai is the oldest in the world, the presence of spice in this 2,000-year-old site is a powerful indication of the ancient spice trade that existed long before modern warfare.