SPICES- NATURE'S GIFT TO MANKIND

“Among the crops used by humankind, the history of spices is perhaps the most adventurous and the most romantic. In the misty distant past, when the primitive man was roaming around the forests in search of food and shelter, he might have tested and tasted many plants, might have selected those that were aromatic and spicy as of special value, and used them to propitiate his primitive gods to save him from the raging storm, thunder, lightning and rain. Out of the darkness of that distant past blossomed the early human civilizations. In all civilizations the aromatic plants were given special status, and many were probably used as offerings to gods. Gradually man might have started using them for curing various illnesses and in course of time spices and aromatic plants had acquired magical associations about their properties” (Ravindran, 2002).
From the dawn of civilization spices were sought after eagerly. The seafarers of the ancient lands braved the raging waves and winds to go to distant places in search of spices and aromatics. The discovery of the fairyland of spices and Spice Islands was one of the major aims of most circumnavigations that the age of Renaissance had witnessed. Such navigational expeditions and discoveries had opened up the flora and fauna of many countries to the rest of the world; the most notable among them was the “Columbian exchange” following the discovery of American continent by Columbus, and Amerigo Vespucci. Columbus went in search of India and black pepper but discovered America and red pepper. The exchanges that followed the discovery of new lands changed radically the cuisines of the world and the medicines too, “reshaping every one’s food basket and medicine chest significantly” (Duke, 2003).

The recorded history of the use of spices goes back only to about five thousand years or so from the Egyptian or at the most from the Indus Valley Civilization. But the unrecorded history goes back to about 50000 to 60000 years when the primitive man and woman were roaming in the forests in search of food. However the natural history of spices plants goes back to about 70-60 millions of years to the Paleozoic and Eocene epochs of the Tertiary period, when the modern angiosperms had started evolving. Then plants had to evolve special phytochemical mechanisms to keep the phytovores away, and in response to such demand the whole metabolic machinery for the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites came into existence. The properties of spices and aromatic plants that make them attractive and useful is the legacy that has been handed down millions of generations from that distant past.

Spices were most valuable among the folk medicinal plants, infact spices were valued more as medicinal during the early times and that the use in food became popular probably much later. However the picture has changed later in the history of mankind. Man soon discovered that the addition of pepper, ginger, cardamom or cinnamon made a tremendous difference in quality and taste and that food lasted longer. From a felt need the use of spices must have became popular soon as a means of preserving meat. Sherman and Billing (1999) examined 43 spices in more than 4500 meat based recipes from 36 countries and concluded that spices are used because of their antimicrobial properties. Spices are often used in quantities sufficient to kill microbes and in ways that preserve their microbicidal properties. Sherman and Flaxman (2001) commended “Phytochemicals are legacies of multiple co-evolutionary races between plants and their enemies-parasites, pathogens and herbivores. These chemical cocktails are the plants’ recipes for survival. Man is exploiting these cocktails to enhance the flavour and taste of his foods and to prevent their spoilage and to protect himself from various illnesses”.

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