People Have Been Eating Curry for 4,500 Years

The next time you order a spicy vindaloo or masala, remember you are tasting ancient history. Using a method called starch grain analysis, archaeologists identified residues of turmeric and ginger in 4,500-year-old pottery shards and human teeth from excavations in India. The remains were dated to between 2500 and 2200 B.C., and researchers also found a carbonized clove of garlic at the site. These three ingredients—ginger, garlic, and turmeric—are still the basic components of curry today. The original curry predates European presence in India by about 4,000 years. While the curry we recognize today evolved through centuries of cross-cultural trade between India, Southeast Asia, and Europe, its ancient origins run deeper than previously thought. Starch is how plants store energy, and microscopic amounts can remain long after the plant itself has deteriorated. When heated in cooking, each plant species leaves its own specific molecular signature. To researchers peering through microscopes, these remains tell the story of what cooks dropped into the dinner pot four and a half millennia ago.