The high Himalayan valley of Upper Mustang today appears isolated and remote. But more than 1600 years ago, the settlements of Upper Mustang participated in an extensive trade network that ultimately connected them to the fabled Silk Road. Not only did exotic objects find their way in to the region, but new ideas and religious practices appeared in mortuary rites and rituals and which reflect a complex blend of...
Andrew Womack, Stanford Archaeology Center, Stanford University
More than 2000 years before the development of the historical Silk Road, people living in what is now northwestern China were participating in long-distance exchange networks that brought them new goods and technologies from both the Central Asian steppe and eastern China. These included domesticates such as wheat, barley, sheep, and cattle, as well as bronze working, jade carving, and pyromantic divination. Many scholars have...
Sören Stark, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, NYU
The oasis of Bukhara in present-day Uzbekistan was a major node in the network of ancient and medieval communication lines across Eurasia, located at an important crossroad where routes between eastern Iran and Samarqand met with routes which ran between Bactria/Tokharistan (and India) and Lake Aral and further on to eastern Europe. Archaeological and historical studies on this region have long focused on its urban centers. In...
Michael Frachetti, Washington University in St Louis
For over a century, the Silk Road was depicted by camel caravans crossing barren deserts, transporting exotic commodities to oasis cities across Central Asia and beyond. The harsh grasslands of the Eurasian steppe and the soaring peaks of Inner Asia were seen as barriers to this flow of Asian commerce — risky regions to be crossed quickly or avoided altogether. Yet new archaeological research in the steppes and highlands of Central...
Jack Meng-Tat Chia is a Senior Tutor in the Department of History at the National University of Singapore and currently a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Center for Buddhist Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Born and raised in Singapore, he received his MA in East Asian Studies from Harvard University, and his PhD in History from Cornell University. He is currently working on his book manuscript...
The high Himalayan valley of Upper Mustang today appears isolated and remote. But more than 1600 years ago, the settlements of Upper Mustang participated in an extensive trade network that ultimately connected them to the fabled Silk Road. Not only did exotic objects find their way in to the region, but new ideas and religious practices appeared in mortuary rites and rituals and which reflect a complex blend of...
More than 2000 years before the development of the historical Silk Road, people living in what is now northwestern China were participating in long-distance exchange networks that brought them new goods and technologies from both the Central Asian steppe and eastern China. These included domesticates such as wheat, barley, sheep, and cattle, as well as bronze working, jade carving, and pyromantic divination. Many scholars have...
The oasis of Bukhara in present-day Uzbekistan was a major node in the network of ancient and medieval communication lines across Eurasia, located at an important crossroad where routes between eastern Iran and Samarqand met with routes which ran between Bactria/Tokharistan (and India) and Lake Aral and further on to eastern Europe. Archaeological and historical studies on this region have long focused on its urban centers. In
For over a century, the Silk Road was depicted by camel caravans crossing barren deserts, transporting exotic commodities to oasis cities across Central Asia and beyond. The harsh grasslands of the Eurasian steppe and the soaring peaks of Inner Asia were seen as barriers to this flow of Asian commerce — risky regions to be crossed quickly or avoided altogether. Yet new archaeological research in the steppes and highlands of Central...
Jack Meng-Tat Chia is a Senior Tutor in the Department of History at the National University of Singapore and currently a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Center for Buddhist Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Born and raised in Singapore, he received his MA in East Asian Studies from Harvard University, and his PhD in History from Cornell University. He is currently working on his book manuscript...