When you think of international trading globalization you probably think it's a relatively modern phenomenon

However, the roots of globalization actually go back thousands of years

While there were many products that were originally traded there was one particular category of goods that drove trade like no other. Spices.

Spices are common and ubiquitous today, but centuries ago they were extremely prized and valued.

Learn more about the spice trade and how it shaped the world we live in today

on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Book your ticket to happiness with Sun Express Airlines. It's hard for modern people to understand just how important and valuable spices once were.

Today, spices are affordable and can be purchased at any grocery store.

The idea that spices may have driven the global economy makes about as much sense to most people as apples or paper plates driving the global economy.

Yet spices were important.

Extremely important.

Spice is just a catch-all term for any plant part which can be used to flavor food.

A spice could come from the bark of a tree like cinnamon,

from a fruit like black pepper,

from a part of a flower like saffron, from a seed like nutmeg, or from a... like a

seed like nutmeg, or from a root like ginger.

Spices were used in the preparation of food,

as well as in food preservation and even for medicinal use.

In some places, they were also just used as status

symbols for the rich. The fact about spices that drives this story is that most

spices can only be grown in tropical climates. In particular, most of them, going

back to antiquity, were grown in the region around the Indian Ocean. Black pepper

originally came from South India. Nutmeg originated in Indonesia as did clothes.

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