Herodotus: The Histories (C.484-420 B.C.)
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The Cinnamon Route
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Cinnamon has probably been known in the Mediterranean since the second millennium BC. Herodotus describes it as being used in mummification and Ezekiel mentions it as one of the commodities handled by the Tyrian trading network. Classical authors are unanimous in regarding it as a product of Africa and it was not handled by the routes described in the Periplus except in so far as it was injected into them at Opone (Mogadishu) and Mosullan (Berbera) from the East African coast. In fact however in classical times, cinnamon was only produced in Southern China, and northern South East Asia, its later center of production in Ceylon not then having been developed. A passage in Pliny the Elder explains that cinnamon was brought to Africa by merchant sailors. These sailors were Indonesians who would influence the east coast of Africa for many centuries and whose descendents still live in Madagascar.
The wild cinnamon tree's origin is in the eastern Himalayas. At least from the early bronze age it became a cultivated plant in China. The Indonesians exported it to Java paying for it with cloves from the spice islands. In Java they later also started cultivating it. From there they brought it to east Africa passing by the southern tip of India. So
starting another place where later cinnamon would grow.
As documentary evidence we have first Herodotus, who describes what kind of stories were used to keep the origin of the cinnamon secret.
And Pliny who found out the truth (are part) about it.
HERODOTUS (C.484-420 B.C.)
The Arabians cover their bodies and faces, all but their eyes, with ox hides and other skins before going out to collect cassia. It grows in a shallow lake. The lake and all the country around are infested by winged creatures like bats, which screetch horribly and are very fierce. They have to be kept from attacking the men's eyes while they are cuttinig the cassia.
The process of collecting the cinnamon is even stranger. In what country it grows is quite unknown. The Arabians say that the dry sticks, which we call cinnamon, are brought to Arabia by large birds, which carry them to their nests, made of mud, on mountain precipices which no man can climb. The method invented to get the cinnamon sticks is this. People cut up the bodies of dead oxen into very large joints, and leave them on the ground near the nests. They then scatter, and the birds fly down and carry of the meat to their nests, which are to weak to bear the weight and fall to the ground. The men come and pick up the cinnamon. Acquired in this way it is exported to other countries.
PLINY THE ELDER (23-79 AD)
Those old tales were invented by the Arabians to raise the price of their goods. There is an accompanying story that under the reflected rays of the sun at midday an indescribable sort of collective odor is given off from the whole of the peninsula, which is due to the harmoniously blended exhalation of all those aromas, and that the first news of Arabia received by the fleets of Alexander the Great were these odors, wafted out by the sea.
All these stories are nonsense. In fact cinnamon which is the same thing as cinnumum, grows in "Ethiopia", which is linked by intermarriage with the cave dwellers. These buy it from their neighbors and bring it over vast seas on rafts which have no rudders to steer them, no oars to push them, no sails to propel them, indeed no motive power at all but man alone and his courage. What is more, they take to sea in winter, around the solstice, which is when the east winds blow their hardest. These winds drive them on the proper course across the bays. When they have rounded the cape, a west-north-west wind will land them in the harbor called Ocilia so that is the trading place they prefer. They say that their traders take almost five years there and back, and many die. On the return journey they take glassware and bronze ware, clothing brooches and necklaces: so there is one more trade route that exists chiefly because of women follow fashion.