Garlic Powder from Cook It is in a region of Central Asia, straddling states which today are called Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, east of the Caspian Sea, that we find the first traces of the existence of garlic. In this region of the world, an Indo-European empire, appearing as a paradise land with infinite resources, Bactria, was the cradle of Zoroastrism, about 4000 years ago. Thanks to nomadic peoples, the cultivation of garlic quickly spread both to China in the east and to the Mediterranean countries in the west. Christopher Columbus would have taken him across the Atlantic. The tablets of the Sumerians from Mesopotamia attest that garlic was already used for its medicinal properties, more than three thousand years before Jesus Christ.