Early nutmeg use in the Banda Islands
Uso de la nuez moscada en las islas Banda
- Date
- c. 1500 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Pulau Ai, Banda Islands, Maluku, Indonesia
- Credited to
- Inhabitants of the Banda Islands
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
Nutmeg residues on pottery from Pulau Ai show its consumption about 3,500 years ago. For millennia, the Banda Islands were the world's only source of this spice, a driving force of the maritime spice trade.
Finding published by Lape et al. (2018). Initial use may have been culinary or medicinal.
What it led to
- the spice-trade network across Southeast Asia
- the spice route to India and the Mediterranean
- the Dutch conquest of Banda (1621)