Long before it scented holiday kitchens or topped morning lattes, cinnamon moved across continents as one of the most coveted substances in the ancient world. Its story stretches back thousands of years — a tale of trade secrets, colonial conquest, and a small island nation whose forests held something the rest of the world desperately wanted.
What the evidence shows
- Cinnamon use: Documentary and archaeological evidence places human use of cinnamon as far back as roughly 2000 B.C.E., when ancient Egyptians employed it as a perfuming agent in the embalming process.
- Sri Lanka origins: Portuguese traders confirmed Ceylon — present-day Sri Lanka — as the primary source of true cinnamon around 1518 C.E., ending centuries of deliberate mystery maintained by Arab merchants to protect their monopoly.
- Cassia vs. Ceylon: Two main commercial varieties exist today — cassia cinnamon, grown primarily in Indonesia, and Ceylon cinnamon, still largely produced in Sri Lanka, each with distinct flavor profiles and price points.
A spice wrapped in legend
Arab traders who controlled the cinnamon route had every incentive to keep its origins secret. The spice arrived in Europe via long, difficult overland routes, making it scarce and expensive — and the traders intended to keep it that way.
The stories they invented were extraordinary. The 5th-century B.C.E. Greek historian Herodotus recorded one tale in which enormous birds carried cinnamon sticks to nests perched atop unreachable mountains. Merchants supposedly lured the birds down by leaving chunks of ox meat below — the weight of which would collapse the nests, scattering the precious cinnamon. Another account placed the spice in deep canyons guarded by terrifying snakes. First-century C.E. Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder suggested it came from Ethiopia, ferried on rudderless rafts powered by human will alone.
These myths persisted for centuries. They were not superstition — they were competitive strategy.
What made cinnamon so desirable
In medieval Europe, cinnamon was not merely a flavoring. It was a symbol of wealth and status, restricted largely to noble households. As a rising middle class began seeking access to luxury goods, demand for cinnamon surged.
Its practical value was just as significant. Cinnamon could preserve meats through winter months — a property with real nutritional and economic stakes in a pre-refrigeration world. When the Roman emperor Nero reportedly burned a year’s supply of cinnamon on the funeral pyre of his second wife, Poppaea Sabina, in 65 C.E., he was not just grieving. He was making a statement about wealth on a scale few could imagine.
The spice’s draw was powerful enough to redirect the course of European exploration. Christopher Columbus wrote to Queen Isabella claiming he had found cinnamon in the New World. The samples he sent back were not cinnamon. Spanish explorer Gonzalo Pizarro trekked across the Amazon in search of what he called the pais de la canela — cinnamon country — and came home empty-handed.
The island at the center of everything
Around 1518 C.E., Portuguese traders arrived at Ceylon — the island now known as Sri Lanka — and confirmed what Arab merchants had hidden for generations. The island’s forests held the world’s finest cinnamon. The Portuguese conquered the kingdom of Kotto, enslaved its population, and seized control of the cinnamon trade for nearly a century.
In 1638 C.E., the kingdom of Kandy allied with Dutch forces to expel the Portuguese. The Dutch succeeded — but then held the kingdom in debt for their military services, effectively replacing one occupier with another. The Dutch East India Company controlled the Ceylon cinnamon monopoly for roughly 150 more years.
Britain took control in 1784 C.E. following the fourth Anglo-Dutch War. By 1800 C.E., however, the monopoly had lost its grip. Cinnamon had begun to be cultivated in other parts of the world, chocolate and cassia were gaining popularity as rival luxuries, and what had once been a rare treasure was becoming an everyday commodity.
Lasting impact
The cinnamon trade helped shape the age of European exploration — not just as a motivation for individual voyages, but as a model for the colonial monopoly economies that would define the 16th through 18th centuries. Control of a single commodity from a single island became a template repeated across dozens of goods and geographies.
Ceylon cinnamon also became the subject of serious scientific inquiry in the 20th and 21st centuries, with researchers examining its potential role in managing blood sugar, reducing inflammation, and supporting cardiovascular health. Whether ancient peoples understood these properties intuitively — or simply loved the flavor — the plant they cultivated has proven far more complex than any spice rack suggests.
Sri Lanka remains the world’s leading producer of true Ceylon cinnamon, a living thread connecting a contemporary agricultural economy to one of the oldest spice trades in human history.
Blindspots and limits
The historical record on cinnamon’s earliest cultivation is thin. The ~8000 B.C.E. date sometimes cited for initial human use lacks direct archaeological evidence; the documented record begins more clearly around 2000 B.C.E. with Egyptian sources. The contributions of Sri Lankan farmers and Indigenous workers who cultivated, harvested, and processed cinnamon across millennia are largely absent from surviving records — their knowledge kept the trade alive while their names went unrecorded. The colonial period’s violence against Ceylon’s people deserves more than a footnote, though the archival record is still being fully examined.
Read more
For more on this story, see: History.com — Cinnamon’s Spicy History
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Ghana establishes a new marine protected area at Cape Three Points
- Indigenous land rights recognition reaches 160 million hectares ahead of COP30
- The Good News for Humankind archive on ancient history
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