Nutmeg Strait to the chokepoint...History never repeats or does it? Ep. eight

If the story of Nutmeg were a repeatable lesson in life, what are we learning? 

Andy sees links between the current strife and trade wars and the past story of nutmeg and ponders its meaning.

Bandar, Banda, Muscat, chokepoints, the Strait of Hormuz, and Toponymy.

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Disclaimer
This podcast explores history, chemistry, cultural belief, and speculation.
It does not provide medical advice or advocate drug use.
Nutmeg contains the compound myristicin, which is not MDMA.
Historical medicinal claims reflect beliefs of their time, not modern science.
Some ideas presented are interpretive and are examined critically throughout the series.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

For centuries, the seed of the mistrica fragrance tree nutmeg, also known as Muska, has been sought after by people all over the world for its perceived medicinal and magical powers. It has been called the spice of life. Or the spice of kings. Thought to have cured the plague, have aphrodisiac qualities, and even cure flatulence, nutmeg was considered a symbol of wealth and status over thousands of years. Instigating the birth of capitalism, globalism, environment genocide and war. But why was this spite really so valuable? The answer may surprise you. That makes qualities and its story could be just what we need to cure a modern-day ailment. We want to explore its incredible history and the mystery that surrounds its real value to society over time. Welcome to the secret story of Nutmeg. The mysteries and histories of a seed that shaped the world, it's discovery. Split ends, an odd band from New Zealand, a country named by the Dutch, the New Zealand, named after Sealand, in the Netherlands, a long way from home, are touring again. That song, History Never Repeats, has been on my mind a lot lately. So has the inextricable links between names of places and things, toponymy and nomenclature and the way of the world. However, first, an apology. Life has been life. Since the last episode, in my life, there has been life and there has been death. Well, deaths. Family, friends, and neighbors, which have held up life for a while. And in some way I thought this podcast may also have been gone. But we are back, maybe reborn, maybe just the same to follow this path given to us by Trad in all its peculiar glory. A path that I've been describing to friends and allies that goes from the bizarre and unbelievable to undeniable factual points of history and science to unverifiable gut feelings that turn to, well, why not? And who is to say why not in this day and age? Since our last podcast, the world seems to have turned upside down. What could be said is said no more, and what can't be said is said aloud. Things that used to make sense seem to be things that are discounted or ignored, things that don't give in weird twisted connotations of being the truth. Because now I don't even know why. What I do know though is that the things we have just covered in the last seven episodes, including that sealed section, a history that covered, let's say, a thousand years or so, seemed to have been recovered, realigned, reactioned in the last eight months or so, in real time. Right in front of us. We had some negotiations in a city called Muscat, which led to a breakdown of a treaty beginning a war. One country wanting to keep its monopoly on morality, another determined not to lose grip on its strategic position. That led us to a complete blockage of a choke point that now has the whole world realigning, rethinking allegiances, and re-establishing a new world order. There are talks of deals over and over again. But do you think there will be a deal to rival that of the swapping of the Isle of Run with Manhattan? I have to thank Trad for setting me on this journey. Honestly. Yes, I may have been ignorant, but eight months ago I had never heard of the term choke point until I read it in Amitov Gosh's book The Nutmeg's Curse, Parables for a Planet in Crisis. When first hearing the term and realizing that world events have been dictated by these choke points for millennia, my whole outlook on history changed. And here we are again. The Strait of Hamuz is clogged. A virtual planetary trade heart attack. One side of the strait is Iran, which the world is now finding out is not the backwards backwater that has been painted into our collective minds by our current moralistic imperialist overlords, the US and their proxies. As you know, Iran was once called Persia. The Persians have been great traders for thousands of years. They held the secret of the whereabouts of the great spices, like nutmeg, for a long, long, long time. Keeping the people of the Bandas, the Wandanese, safe from colonization. Or did they? One thing that has come to light for me in the past few months is that the Bandas have a name that is significant to the Persians and the Persian language because of this manufactured war for deals. In the Strait of Hamuz, that currently clogged artery that has had us in cardiac arrest for months now, there is a town that came to light for me called Banda Abbas. I have never taken any notice of towns in Iran before this war, except Tehran and maybe Shiraz. But here was this city making the news called Banda Abbas. Of course this piqued my interest with the first part of its name, Banda. And I looked at a map and noticed there were quite a few towns and cities called Banda. Banda Abbas, Banda Jagan, Banda Siraf, Banda Lenga, Banda Kamir, heaps. Banda, Banda, Banda. Looking into this, it seems Banda is the Persian name for port or harbour, and more particularly, commercial port or commercial harbour. Is this a coincidence? Look, this is no rabbit hole, but this is something that is clearly quite connected to me. We have in Iran, and I'm only looking here because of this bloody war and this bloody news cycle, which seems to be following some sort of twisted trading flourishes, looking at this toponymy question, we have ports in Iran called bandas. And it just highlights to me that direct connection with our favourite islands. Well, in this podcast anyway, the bandas. What the actual fudge is going on there. On a whim, I wonder what Banda means in the language of Indonesia, Bahusa Indonesian. Now I thought of it as a relatively new language, but in actual fact it is really the Malay language, which has been added to over centuries by the various traders into the area who adopted it as the trading language for the region, and these traders added their own words to it from Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian. And Banda in Malay or Bahasa Indonesian is the word for port or harbour. Banda Islands. Harbor Islands. The name of the Bandas, which we have used for centuries, is most likely in my mind Persian in origin. Out of all the islands they considered significant, they named this the commercial harbour. It seems to me that these were always the destination islands. After everything I have learned so far, this one little detail has actually blown me away because it's gotten me thinking about how the world operates again, and I'm pondering this question. With what we are seeing now, the manoeuvring around choke points, the shoring up of resources for monopolies, duopolies, and trade deals, could the bandas have been not the only evolutionary source of nutmeg, but actually a manufactured monopoly of the spice, long before Europeans and took it away. No other islands were called Banda. Was it a place for consolidating resources to control trade? I mean think about it. Pulling in all the nutmeg into one area. I mean shit, if we look at the present, which is repeating history, and if you think it's not, then maybe you need to look again. Or maybe we just look at the Mark Twain saying history never repeats, it only rhymes, although there's no actual evidence of Mark Twain saying that. Then why would we not see this as a possible scenario? It's just a question. Sorry, Trad, that's what I do. However, maybe it was the first harbour. Because as we do know from another earlier episode, the Austronesians were the very first seafarers. They reached Africa, settled the Pacific, and probably many more places. And who is to say that this isn't all the other way around? That our trading history comes from this area. That the Persians got the word banda from the Malay. Something to ponder. Anyway. On the other side of the Strait of Humus we have Oman. Amman has that horn that juts into the strait, making the strait what it is, a tight choke point. And as we know, now more than ever, an important trade choke point that allows 25% of the world's oil to flow, when not blocked, through it. I know there are probably a lot more people who actually know a lot more about this topic than me, of course. But what interests me is that the capital city of this country with the horn that makes the strait is called Muscat. Muscat was an old name for Nutmeg, and some peoples around Europe still refer it to that. Muscat. There is a popular myth that the two are linked. That Nutmeg Muscat is called Muscat because the people of Europe believed that is where it originated from. Anyway, with its close proximity to India, just across the sea, Muscat has been a major trading port for centuries, millennia even. Such an important place that when the Portuguese came around the Horn of Africa looking for Nutmeg, because of its position, they took the port of Muscat for themselves and they held it for over a century. The toponymy of the town's name, direct from Wikipedia, states The origin of the word muscat is disputed. Some authors claim that the word has Arabic origins from Mushgar, meaning an inflated hide or skin. Other authors claim that the name Muscat means anchorage or the place of letting fall the anchor. Other derivations include muscat from Old Persian, meaning strong-sented, or from Arabic meaning falling place or hidden. Cryptus portus is synonymous with amman, hidden land, but of Man, Oman, and the old Sumerian name Magan means sea people in Arabic. An inhabitant is a Muscatur, Muscat, Muscatite, or Muscatan. So what am I trying to say here? I just thought, you know, the fact that we have this war going on in 2026, hopefully over by the time you hear this, although I heard it just started again, which has echoes of trade wars of the past. It does to me anyway, which pulled up old Persian names for ports and harbours which have links to Nutmeg, or Muscat to some, made an interesting cap on things whilst I've been away dealing with all the things life throws at us. In that time I've learnt that we perhaps haven't learnt a bloody thing about the way the world works. And we won't unless we have an inkling that it's probably happened before. And we can learn from that story to heal. That's it. That's if we need to. That's if we want to. Heal, that is. And so speaking of healing, I was stating in the last episode that I have started on my quest to find the chemical evidence of the properties of nutmeg that could possibly account for these big stories that Trad has given me. The ones of the psychedelic healing properties of this amazing little seed that changed the world. The actual reasons, it may have just done that. And speaking of Trad, I yet haven't talked to you about his sealed section. About my thoughts on what he says, or my interpretation or translation of that last episode. And I think I will in the next one. See ya then. And hopefully sooner than later at this time. And this episode is dedicated to friends and family lost since we last spoke. Anthea, Judy, Bill, and Tom. This is the secret story of Nutmeg.