Browse Items (23 total)

The silkworm was domesticated in China by 3000 BCE, and silk became a major trade good between Xi’an in central China and the eastern Mediterranean, carried by caravans across ancient routes that span the Taklamakan Desert. Known as the Silk Road,…

Clove is native to the Maluku Islands in eastern Indonesia. It was in use in China as early as the third century BCE, and has been used in India since ancient times. Between the second and eighth centuries CE, it was spread from Egypt throughout the…

Musk oil, obtained from the musk deer, native to the Himalaya area (including India and China) was shipped to Europe through Islamic lands during the Renaissance. Scents of animal origin, including musk and two other ingredients made from animal…

Despite the Europeans’ awareness of the civet cat in the early fifteenth century, it was not until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that civet would increasingly acquire its fame and come to be imported into Europe with the expansion of…

The origin of ambergris is still shrouded in mystery. Although it has appeared from time to time over many centuries on European shores, such as Portugal, Spain, France, and England, ambergris is not a commonly-found local substance in Europe. As an…

Tragacanth gum is exuded from the tree Astragalus gummifer, which grows in desert areas. It is native to parts of Turkey and the Middle East (Iran, Iraq, Khurdistan, and Syria).

Gum arabic has mainly been acquired from a species of the acacia tree in Sudan and Senegal. It has been used in food and medicine since the Middle Ages in Europe. After the fifteenth century, European seafarers discovered a copious source of gum…

The exact botanical origin of sandarac still remains unclear. However, it is most likely that sandarac was obtained from Tetraclinis articulata, small conifers of the family Cupressaceae that grow in northwestern Africa. In the early modern period,…

The exact origin of turmeric is uncertain although turmeric has at least 6000 years of recorded history of use as a medicine and within the socio-cultural contexts of the Indian subcontinent. It is likely that turmeric came to India from the ancient…