The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

by Peter Frankopan

These pathways serve as the world’s central nervous system, connecting peoples and places together, but lying beneath the skin, invisible to the naked eye.

History was twisted and manipulated to create an insistent narrative where the rise of the west was not only natural and inevitable, but a continuation of what had gone before.

History started in the east!! Poor Africa always gets left our I feel :(

For Alexander, as for all ancient Greeks, culture, ideas and opportunities—as well as threats—came from the east.

An intensive building programme expanded a network of fortifications into what became known as the Great Wall of China, and were driven by the same principle as that adopted by Alexander: expansion without defence was useless.

Was NOT to just keep the Huns out ... check mate Mulan movie

there is a correlation not only in the date of the earliest statues of the Buddha, but also in their appearance and design: it seems that it was Apollo that provided the template, such was the impact of Greek influences.

China had opened a door leading on to a trans-continental network; it was the moment of the birth of the Silk Roads.

119 BC

Under the Han dynasty, silk was used alongside coins and grain to pay troops.

Coins were not usable in some parts of China, and grains and other foods spoiled

We think of globalisation as a uniquely modern phenomenon; yet 2,000 years ago too, it was a fact of life, one that presented opportunities, created problems and prompted technological advance.

What propelled Rome into a new era was its reorientation towards the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond.

The capture of Egypt transformed Rome’s fortunes. Now that it controlled the vast harvests of the Nile valley, the price of grain tumbled, providing a major boost to household spending power.

One of the major booms of antiquity produced one of the great literary expressions of bitter jealousy towards the nouveaux riches.

Interesting how looked down upon new wealth has always been. In group favoritism shining strong.

Some put it simply: it was disgraceful, two leading citizens agreed, that Roman men should think it acceptable to sport silken clothing from the east.

See through! Protect the women!

Where Augustus had portrayed himself as a soldier in a famous and magnificent statue found at the Prima Porta on the outskirts of Rome, Diocletian preferred to present himself as a farmer. This summed up how Rome’s ambitions had changed over the course of 300 years, from contemplating expansion to India to contemplating the cultivation of prize-winning vegetables.

Seeing Rome as the progenitor of western Europe overlooks the fact that it consistently looked to and in many ways was shaped by influences from the east.

The equation was as simple as it was powerful: a society protected and favoured by the right god, or gods, thrived; those promising false idols and empty promises suffered.

Zoroastrianism became synonymous with Persia. It did not take much for this religion to be seen as a tool of occupation rather than a form of spiritual liberation. It was no coincidence, then, that some began to look to Christianity precisely as an antidote to the heavy-handed promotion of beliefs from the Persian centre.

The irony of Christianity eventually taking this place

soil dug out from beneath pagan temples was dumped as far away as possible, “stained as it was by devil worship.”

Very interesting. Logical from an ancient Christian pov

It is ironic, therefore, that while Constantine is famous for being the Emperor who laid the basis for the Christianisation of Europe, it is never noted that there was a price to pay for his embrace of a new faith: it spectacularly compromised Christianity’s future in the east.

To keep the nomads from descending through the Caucasus, a massive fortified wall was constructed, running for nearly 125 miles between the Caspian and Black Seas, protecting the Persian interior from attack and serving as a physical barrier between the ordered world to the south and the chaos to the north.

Alliance between Rome and Persia

The Huns scarred the cheeks of infant boys when they were born in order to prevent facial hair growing later in life, while they spent so long on horseback that their bodies were grotesquely deformed; they looked like animals standing on their hind legs.

This do be sounding like anti Hun propaganda

Although it is tempting to dismiss such comments as signs of bigotry, examinations of skeletal remains show that the Huns practised artificial cranial deformation on their young, bandaging the skull to flatten the frontal and occipital bones by applying pressure to them. This caused the head to grow in a distinctly pointed manner. It was not just the behaviour of the Huns that was terrifyingly out of the ordinary; so was the way they looked.

The author really called me out immediately and provided receipts!!!

At the battle of the Catalaunian Plains, in what is now central France, in 451, Attila was defeated by a large force that included an astonishing array of races drawn from the peoples of the steppes.

The Huns made it to FRANCE??? Bruhhhh

The answer, he concluded, was simple: men had sinned and God was punishing them.23 Others reached the opposite conclusion. Rome had been master of the world when it was faithful to its pagan roots, argued Zosimus, the Byzantine historian (who was himself pagan); when it abandoned these and turned to a new faith, it engineered its own demise.

The irony of this

Rivalry sometimes prompted physical violence, such as in the city of Susiana (in what is now south-western Iran) where rival bishops tried to settle scores over a fist-fight.

Ancient Christian priests fist fighting each other is hilarious

The problem, as they saw it, lay in the sloppy translation into Greek of the Syriac term describing the incarnation—although

I feel like most problems with Christianity are due to translation errors

Cities like Merv, Gundes̱ẖāpūr and even Kashgar, the oasis town that was the entry point to China, had archbishops long before Canterbury did.

Indeed, even in the Middle Ages, there were many more Christians in Asia than there were in Europe.

As religions came into contact with each other, they inevitably borrowed from each other. Although it is difficult to trace this accurately, it is striking that the halo became a common visual symbol across Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian and Christian art, as a link between the earthly and the divine, and as a marker of radiance and illumination that was important in all these faiths.

whose aim was evidently to encourage others to find the confidence to become Christian.

So much religious propaganda from all around

Christianity was not just compatible with Buddhism, he was saying; broadly speaking, it was Buddhism.

What a spicy take

Gnosticism, which argued that preaching in terms that had understandable cultural reference points and used accessible language was an obvious way to spread the message.

Two statues, one to a height of 180 feet and another, slightly older, approximately two-thirds of the size, stood carved into vast niches in the rocks for nearly 1,500 years—until they were blown up and destroyed by the Taliban in 2001 in an act of philistinism and cultural savagery

Fuck religious extremism

After a terrible siege lasting six months the Persians succeeded in taking the city in 574, whereupon the Emperor experienced a mental and physical breakdown.

Very glad I don’t have this kind of stress in my life oof

Khusraw listened carefully to what the envoys had to say; then he had them executed.

Savage af

evangelical zeal was vital to the success of early Islam.

When has this not been the key for Islam’s (most religions’) “success”...

Those who converted to Islam early were rewarded with a proportionately greater share of the prizes, in what was effectively a pyramid system.

Early Islam was a pyramid scheme hahahaha

As one learned rabbi put it, Muḥammad was a false prophet, “for the prophets do not come armed with a sword.”

Muḥammad was illiterate. This insulated him from claims that he was familiar with the teachings of the Torah and the Bible—despite near-contemporaries commenting that he was “learned,” and knew both the Old and New Testament.

An ingenious man truly

There was no guarantee that the Arab masters were necessarily going to last either, as a seventh-century Greek text makes absolutely clear: “the body will renew itself,” the author assured his readers; there was hope that the Muslim conquests might be a flash in the pan.

Spoiler alert: it did last

Attention turned to proselytising, evangelising and converting the local populations to Islam—alongside an increasingly hostile attitude towards them.

the largest Chinese kilns became capable of firing 12,000–15,000 pieces at a time.

Wow

“How is the pulse of someone who suffers from anxiety?” was Question 16 of a question-and-answer text written in medieval Egypt; the answer (“slight, weak and irregular”), noted the author, could be found in an encyclopaedia written in the tenth century.

What a shame, he opined, that Arabic was such an elegant language that it was nearly impossible to translate it.

Lmaoooo he really thought

While the Muslim world took delight in innovation, progress and new ideas, much of Christian Europe withered in the gloom, crippled by a lack of resources and a dearth of curiosity.

Science was defeated by faith. It is almost the precise opposite of the world as we see it today: the fundamentalists were not the Muslims, but the Christians; those whose minds were open, curious and generous were based in the east—and certainly not in Europe.

Why does religion do this to us :(

The Islamic conquests created a new world order, an economic giant, bolstered by self-confidence, broad-mindedness and a passionate zeal for progress. Immensely wealthy and with few natural political or even religious rivals, it was a place where order prevailed, where merchants could become rich, where intellectuals were respected and where disparate views could be discussed and debated.

The creation of a “fur road” into the steppe and forest belts to the north was the direct result of the surge in disposable wealth in the centuries following the great conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries.

As with the confrontation between the Roman Empire and the Muslim world in the late seventh century, battles were fought not just between armies, but also over ideology, language and even the imagery on coins.

So many were captured that the very name of those taken captive—Slavs—became used for all those who had their freedom taken away: slaves.

Slave etymology !!!

So great was the scale of traffic of Slavic slaves that it impacted the Arabic language: the word for eunuch (ṣiqlabī) comes from the ethnic label referring to the Slavs (ṣaqālibī).

Interesting