Cooking with spices

Had this great meal Sunday night. Got some spices and a new cookbook for my birthday so tried to make use of both. The spices below were used for the kabobs and were clockwise, starting with the orange turmeric, garlic powder, garam masala, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, salt, and paprika. The lentils were cooked with onion, garlic, carrot, tomatoes, and spiced with thyme and garam masala. Looking forward to spicing things up a bit in the near future, and gaining an understanding of why people were willing to sail across oceans in the 1400's just to spice things up a little.