Dried fruits and nuts at the spice market in Kashgar
Books make me so happy. The one that's making me happy right now is A History of the Silk Road, by Valerie Hansen. This book focuses on the eastern half of the Silk Road, mostly from Samarkand (which can be thought of as perhaps the midway point of the trade routes) to China and mostly prior to the 8th c ce.
If you've attended one of my classes, then you know that I'm the tiniest bit obsessed with the Taklamakan Desert. Taklamakan means "he who goes in doesn't come out again" and they weren't kidding. It's one of the harshest environments on earth and yet humans beings have not just subsisted here, but built multiple kingdoms and civilizations.
If you've attended one of my classes, then you know that I'm the tiniest bit obsessed with the Taklamakan Desert. Taklamakan means "he who goes in doesn't come out again" and they weren't kidding. It's one of the harshest environments on earth and yet humans beings have not just subsisted here, but built multiple kingdoms and civilizations.
This book spends a lot of time in the area, and in the north-western region of China. This corner of the world is really interesting for a whole lot of reasons. One reason is that it has been historically unstable, a seething carpet of city-states and empires and petty kingdoms popping up and spreading across the land and then disappearing. This is where Buddhist refugees from the area of modern day Afghanistan and Pakistan fled to escape from Alexander in classical times and where the remnants of the Sogdian people fled in the 8th c. ce when the Islamic Conquest swept across the old Sassanian Persian empire and captured Samarkand.
The other thing about this part of the world is that it is one of the driest places on earth. In the intense heat and cold, the bodies of people and animals frequently became naturally mummified. The archaeological record is incredible, we have over 100 well preserved mummies from prior to the 8th c ce, some date to 1800 bce. This is where the Mummies of Urumchi (book by Elizabeth Wayland Barber) were preserved in incredible detail.
3,500 year old natural mummy from the Urumchi
Religious texts hidden in sacred caves carved into cliffs have survived in incredible numbers. Not just the Buddhist texts, but Zoarastrian, Manichean, Jewish and Christian.
A lot of these documents were written on things we wouldn't normally think of. In addition to paper and animal skins, they used willow sticks and bamboo and small rectangles of wood with a wooden cover that slides over it to protect the writing. The other interesting bit is that in the early days of the Silk Road trade, paper was rare and expensive. It was used to record the size and destination of caravans, as well as lawsuits and contracts and religious text. But then, because it was rare and expensive, the used paper was re-purposed for funerary garments. So there are gaps in individual texts because they were cut apart and sewn into shirts or shoes and archaeologists have to remove them from the body and remove the seams, lay it flat and try to make sense of it.
Funerary shoe made of recycled paper, painted black on the outside. Text can be seen on the interior of the shoe. Excavated at Turfan by Aurel Stein, 6th-7th c
There's so much good stuff in this book that I'm going to break it up into two posts. Next: Potstickers, Tang Dynasty Barbie and a terrifying road trip.
