 In the third century BC, Chinese emperors of the Han Dynasty required those who addressed them to chew cloves to freshen their breath, and they had reached the Roman world by the first century AD, where they were described by Pliny the Elder.The first clearly dated archeological find of a clove is substantially later than the written evidence, with two examples found at a trading port in Sri Lanka, dated to around 900-1100 AD.An earlier reported find, in Syria, dated to around 1700 BC, is no longer believed to be a clove.