French archaeologists have recently uncovered some assemblages on Myanmar’s lower Kra isthmus that shed light onto maritime Silk Road trading communities beginning in 400 BCE. Given the geographic position of the isthmus between the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thailand, the Myanmar sites served as a stopover for Chinese and other east Asian traders headed west, and for Saudi, Persian, and Indian traders headed … Read more
This bowl is a fine example of pinched-glass craftmanship. It is of Roman (possibly Byzantine) origin and is believed to be dated to the 5th Century ACE (based on the age of the tomb which is from the Hunnu period.) It is also proof of the power of the Silk Road on both trade and politics, because it was found a few years back in … Read more
New evidence of the power and reach of the Silk Road seems to be puzzling and mystifying scholars. Roman jewelry was recently found in in a Japanese tomb dating from the 5th Century ACE. Why this startles anyone is beyond me. The network of maritime and land traders that we now know as the Silk Road linked west and east as far back as 2000 … Read more
Imagine the world around 400 BCE. The Phoenicians in Carthage were the dominant power in North Africa; Socrates had just been condemned to death; in Mesoamerica, the Olmec civilization entered a period of terminal decline; and a Chinese nobleman was laid to rest in his tomb in Xian with soup and wine to see him through to the afterlife. After 2,400 years the cauldron or … Read more