Curry may have landed in Southeast Asia 2000 years ago
Spices found on stone tools shed light on ancient global trade network
Even after 2000 years, the stone slab still smelled of nutmeg. Unearthed in an ancient village in southern Vietnam, the cookware—roughly the size and shape of an anvil—was likely used to grind the spice, along with other ingredients familiar in today’s curries. The discovery, reported today in Science Advances, marks the earliest known example of spice processing in mainland Southeast Asia. It also suggests that visitors from India and Indonesia may have introduced their culinary traditions to the region millennia ago.
“For decades, we have known of the strong Indian influence on Southeast Asian communities,” says Charles Higham, an archaeologist at the University of Otago not involved with the work. He notes that the two regions shared many architectural, linguistic, and religious similarities during this time period. The new study, Higham says, provides “rock solid evidence” that this influence also extended into the culinary sphere.
The grinding stone was unearthed at a site known as Óc Eo, located amid a series of ancient canals on the southwestern side of the Mekong Delta. It was once a major port for the kingdom of Funan, which existed from the first to seventh century C.E.
Since Óc Eo was first excavated in the 1940s, it has yielded a large number of artifacts that suggest the city once lay at the crossroads of a vast trade network that spread as far as the Mediterranean Sea. Khanh Trung Kien Nguyen, an archaeologist at the Southern Institute of Social Sciences in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, was particularly interested in a set of stone tools that he suspected had been used for preparing spices. One, a 75-centimeter-long footed grinding slab made of sandstone, resembles tools still used today for preparing spice paste. Similar objects have been excavated from ancient sites in India.
Nguyen’s team found that microscopic traces of plant matter still clung to the tools, including a large number of starch grains. After closely examining the grains under a microscope and comparing them with samples from more than 200 species, he and colleagues positively identified eight different spices, including turmeric, ginger, clove, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Even after 2000 years, one seed still produced a characteristic nutmeg aroma.
“The preservation of plant remains in Óc Eo is exceptional,” says Hsiao-chun Hung, an archaeologist at Australian National University (ANU) who collaborated with Nguyen on the project. She suspects that the humid climate of southern Vietnam helped shield the remains from degradation. “When we uncover the seeds from the muddy soil for the first time, they appear remarkably fresh, making it difficult to believe that they are nearly 2000 years old.”
The combination of ingredients found at Óc Eo is still used today in curries around Southeast Asia. But the word “curry” may fail to capture variations of the region’s cuisine. The word originated with European colonists, who used it as a blanket term for spiced dishes from southern Asia. “Curry” can take many different forms, however, and understanding the nuances of different regional cuisines ended up being pivotal to Nguyen and Hung’s analysis.
Many of the spices found at Óc Eo, such as clove and nutmeg, are indigenous to South Asia and eastern Indonesia. Their presence in an ancient Vietnamese city suggests travelers from these regions introduced their traditional recipes into mainland Southeast Asia during the early centuries C.E. For some, the journey was several thousand kilometers long.
“This research is a first of its type,” says Peter Bellwood, an archaeologist at ANU who wasn’t involved in the study. Historians, he explains, have “long suspected” the existence of early trade contact between South Asia and Funan, and the discovery at Óc Eo “provides a new level of confirmation.”
The recipes introduced into Vietnam by traders were modified by locals, who supplemented them with familiar ingredients to develop a unique culinary tradition. Although many spices found at Óc Eo were likely imported there, others are endemic to Southeast Asia. Some, including varieties of ginger, are still commonly used in Thai and other Southeast Asian cuisine but are seldom found in similar dishes from India. Nguyen and Hung also recovered traces of coconut from the tools, suggesting spices used at Óc Eo were thickened with coconut milk, a technique characteristic of modern Southeast Asian curry.
“The curry recipe used today has not deviated significantly from the ancient Óc Eo period,” says Nguyen, who notes that the use of turmeric, clove, and cinnamon has remained consistent over the centuries. “This continuity highlights the lasting essence of curry flavors in Vietnamese cuisine.” Almost 2000 years after the cultural exchange between South Asia and Southeast Asia began, he says, we can still taste—and smell—its legacy. (Phie Jacobs/Science)