Punjabi Cuisine It turns out we’ve been eating the spiced dish for a lot longer than anyone ever imagined. The Punjabi curry predates European presence in India by about 4,000 years. Villagers living at the height of the Indus civilization used three key curry ingredients—ginger, garlic, and turmeric—in their cooking. This proto-curry , in fact, was eaten long before Arab, Chinese, Indian, and European traders came in touch with India in the past thousand years. While the ancients left behind plenty of broken pots and mud-brick house foundations, they generally didn’t leave us their recipes. And foodstuffs, unlike pots, rapidly decay. But thanks to technological advances, scientists can identify minute quantities of plant remains left behind by meals cooked thousands of years ago. Serving Pot from Harappa They found additional supporting evidence of ginger and turmeric use on ancient cow teeth unearthed in Harappa , one of the largest Indus cities, located in the West Punjab near th