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A Silk Road Before the \"Silk Road\"
#9
Thanks, Michael, for clarifying the term "Silk Road" and the Chinese process of sericulture. Big Grin

Archaeologists are discovering that long-distance trade routes existed in the third millennium B.C. Notable examples include the Hongshan Culture of Inner Mongolia, the first people to extensively use nephrite jade. Nephrite sources were (and are) located in the western Tarim Basin and above the Sayan Mountans in Siberia, a long distance from the Hongshan.


   
If we go westward, we find nephrite, carnelian, lapis lazuli, and turquoise (a by-product of copper mining) in graves around the Ural area. The above illustration (courtesy of David W. Anthony) shows examples of nephrite and lapis in a Rostovka cemetery in the early Sima-Turbino period. (Click on the photo to view details of Rostovka Grave 2) These "hard" artifacts, mostly in the form of Bactrian beads, show up at Tevsh Uul, Mongolia in 1,300 BC.

What we are viewing is a "worldwide" trade network. Many trade items don't show in the archaeological record, such as clothing, northern furs, and silk. You are probably aware of the late Elena Kuzmina's little book, The Prehistory of the Silk Road (Penn, 2008). It's a good read, well illustrated, and quite academic.


   
Perhaps the most interesting trade item is the cowrie shell, the original form of "cash." Pictured here is an ancient example for sale on the world's largest marketing site. The seller is asking $12 for it. Cowries are perhaps the world's oldest trade item, and were copied in bone, bronze, and gold-plated bronze. They show up in Hongshan graves, as far away as the Urals, proliferate in Shang tombs, and often in Pazyryk graves. The geographical origin of cowries is the Indian Ocean, which means the trade route was world wide, either by land or sea or both.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember about this trade network are the individuals who conducted it. They were the steppe tribes, the so-called "barbarians." In hindsight, it appears they were less barbarian than they were savy traders... "connectors" of ancient civilizations.
Wink
Alan J. Campbell

member of Legio III Cyrenaica and the Uncouth Barbarians

Author of:
The Demon's Door Bolt (2011)
Forging the Blade (2012)

"It's good to be king. Even when you're dead!"
             Old Yuezhi/Pazyrk proverb
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Messages In This Thread
A Silk Road Before the \"Silk Road\" - by Alanus - 03-26-2015, 07:16 PM
A Silk Road Before the \"Silk Road\" - by Alanus - 03-26-2015, 10:21 PM
A Silk Road Before the \"Silk Road\" - by Walhaz - 03-27-2015, 02:36 PM
A Silk Road Before the \"Silk Road\" - by Alanus - 03-27-2015, 03:08 PM
RE: A Silk Road Before the \"Silk Road\" - by Alanus - 02-19-2017, 05:21 PM

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