Coriander Seeds

Coriander grows wild over a wide area of Western Asia and Southern Europe, prompting the comment: "It is hard to define exactly where this plant is wild and where it only recently established itself."^[16] Recent works suggested that coriander accessions found in the wild in Israel and Portugal might represent the ancestor of the cultivated coriander.^{[17][better source needed][18][better source needed]} They have low germination rates and a small vegetative appearance. The accession found in Israel has an extremely hard fruit coat.^[17]

Fifteen desiccated mericarps were found in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B level (six to eight thousand years ago) of the Nahal Hemar Cave, published in Kislev 1988, and eleven from ~8,000–7,500 years ago in Pre-Pottery Neolithic C in Atlit-Yam, published as Kislev et al. 2004, both in Israel. If these finds do belong to these archaeological layers, they are the oldest find of coriander in the world.^[19]: 163

About 500 millilitres (17 US fl oz) of coriander mericarps were recovered from the tomb of Tutankhamen, and because this plant does not grow wild in Egypt, Zohary and Hopf interpret this find as proof that coriander was cultivated by the ancient Egyptians.^[16]

The Ebers Papyrus, an Egyptian text dated around 1550 BC, mentioned uses of coriander.^[20]

Coriander seems to have been cultivated in Greece since at least the second millennium BC. One of the Linear B tablets recovered from Pylos refers to the species as being cultivated for the manufacture of perfumes; it was used in two forms - as a spice for its seeds and as an herb for the flavour of its leaves.^[14]

This appears to be confirmed by archaeological evidence from the same period; the large quantities of the species retrieved from an Early Bronze Age layer at Sitagroi in Macedonia could point to cultivation of the species at that time.^[21]

Later, coriander was mentioned by Hippocrates (around 400 BC), as well as Dioscorides (65 AD).^[20]