cinnamon is collected in that part of Arabia, and from there it is sent all over
the world.”
Giant greedy birds aside, there is some speculation that cassia wasfirst
brought westward by Malay sailors who later also carried Ceylon cinnamon
over what is referred to as the“Cinnamon Road.”This was not a road at all
but an all-water route across the Indian Ocean to Madagascar and the East
African coast via Ceylon and the Maldive Islands developed sometime in the
first millenniumBCE. Pliny mentions cinnamon traders who rode the mon-
soons“from gulf to gulf”on boats he considered to be little more than rafts.
From there Arabs carried it north to Somalia where one port handled so
much that extra large ships had to be used to carry it up the Red Sea.
Ancient writers often referred to Somalia simply as the“Cinnamon Country,”
and the people of Arabia were said to have had so many rolls of cinnamon
and cassia that Agatharchides claimed they used it forfirewood. The true
sources were concealed so well that when Roman merchants arrived in India,
they did not recognize cinnamon trees when they saw them.
Spices and related products accounted for more than half of the goods
officially listed by the Roman government as imports from the Indian Ocean
and eastern regions. Most lack the name recognition accorded to pepper and
cinnamon or even frankincense and myrrh today. One of the most expensive
was nard (or spikenard), an aromatic plant that grew high in the Himalayas.
From its dried roots and stems, a musky smelling ointment was produced
that was used in medicines, perfumes, cosmetics, and cookery. The leaf,
according to Pliny,“holds a foremost place among perfumes.”He discusses
different types of nard, the lowliest being the Gangetic variety, which he
calls“putrid, having a poisonous smell.”Nevertheless, the demand even for
this form of nard was such that it made the journey thousands of miles across
land and sea from the roof of the world to the city on the Tiber. The market
forces driving the prices of these products remain obscure since not enough
information is available to determine how the supply and demand mechan-
ism worked and what additional considerations played a role. For example,
costus, a fragrant root from Kashmir used in perfumes and medicine, which
appears to have properties similar to nard, cost one-eighth its price.
Bdellium, a gum resin obtained from trees similar to myrrh and used in
much the same way, cost one-fourth the price of myrrh, which in turn cost a
fraction of nard or malabathrum. Frankincense, on the other hand, brought
only half the price of myrrh on the Roman market.
Spices, aromatics, resins, and the products made from them were not the
only commoditiesflowing out of the Indian Ocean. India, East Africa, and
Southeast Asia were the world’s largest exporters of ivory and rhinoceros horn
used in the making of a wide variety of artistic and functional products.
Powdered rhinoceros horn was also included in the pharmacopoeia of many
cultures for prescriptions (none of which had any scientific basis since rhino
horn was composed essentially of compressed hair) intended to solve a range
When India was the center of the world 93