Did you know that the brinjal and mango curry you ate at the Indian restaurant, your friend's house, or learnt to cook from cookbooks / social media go back over 5000 years? It can be traced back to the Indus Valley, one of the cradles of human civilisation along with contemporaries at the Nile River Delta and the Yellow River Basin.
The Harappa region civilisation in the Indus Valley (in today's Pakistan) was thriving 5000 years ago.
Harappa was later abandoned for unknown reasons - theories of its disappearance include the Indus River tributaries changing course or (the sections where Harappa was) drying up, forcing the inhabitants to migrate in search of new water sources.
From claypots found among ruins of the lost ancient city, archeologists found leftover food with traces of eggplant, mango, turmeric, sesame seed, ginger and garlic.
This allows us to recreate today the dish left behind in the ancient claypot - the earliest known curry in the world from 5,000 years ago.
This is not the world's first curry, but the earliest that we have a record of.
The Harappa people took their curry with them when they migrated. The basic recipe took on additional ingredients like more spices, meats, etc in their new settlements. Go south of Harappa, yogurt was added. Go further south, coconut milk was featured. You get the idea.
New ingredients were also added across time. For example, chili pepper was added when the Portuguese brought the vegetable (from central America) to India thousands of years later in the 1500s.
There are still versions of eggplant and mango curries across South Asia today. Not many people though, know that the dish came from 5000 years back in time.
Next time I am in an Indian restaurant, I will order a brinjal-mango curry.
Personally, I find it amazing that I can still taste food from far back in time and feel the sensations / pleasures people then felt when they were enjoying brinjal-mango curry long ago.
I feel that is so cool.
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