Networks of Communication and Exchange 300 BCE-600 CE

 The Silk Road connected China and the Middle East across Central Asia  The Silk Road was not just a way to bring people together but a social system  The main customers were wealthy elites but the products, new technology and foreign ideas that the traders brought with them affected an entire society

 The Silk Road experienced several periods of heavy use beginning in 100 BCE  The origin of the Silk Road was in the Seleucid kings.  The Seleucid empire was a Greek-Macedonian state that was created after the death of Alexander the Great and the carving up of his empire.  At the height of its power, it included central Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Persia, and parts of Pakistan.

 The Seleucid kingdom focused its attention on Mesopotamia and Syria.  This allowed, the Parthians who were located in northeastern Iran, to become a major force by 247 BCE.  The eagerness of the Chinese to have western products and the fact that the Parthian state had captured the markets in Mesopotamia from the Seleucid brought about the existence of the Silk Road

 Zhang was one of the first to explore the Silk Road on behalf of Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty  Zhang brought back alfalfa and wine grapes.

 Brought to China: horses, pistachios, walnuts, pomegranates, sesame, coriander, spinach, jasmine oil, oak galls (used in tanning animal hides, dyeing and making ink) and other trade products that physicians made good use of.  Brought to the West: peaches and apricots, cinnamon, ginger, and other spices not grown in the West

 The Sasanids defeated the Parthians around 224.  The Sasanids were known for their warrior elite which is shown by the material remains that have been found.  Silver work and silk fabrics showed a sedentary lifestyle of the warrior elite

This empire brought many new crops from India and China. They brought cotton, sugar cane, rice, citrus trees, eggplants.

 The Sasanids established Zoroastrianism as their state religion.  Christianity was practiced in the Byzantine Empire.  Both religions practiced intolerance at this time.  Christians became pawns in the political rivalry with the Byzantines and were sometimes persecuted by the Sasanid kings

 The Nestorian Christians were persecuted by the Byzantine emperor for putting too much emphasis on the humanness of Jesus Christ.  For example, they believed that Mary was not the mother of God but that Jesus was divine. She was the mother of the human Jesus.

Zoroastrianism had a similar episode. A man named Mani founded a new religion in Mesopotamia. Manichaeism believed in the struggle between good and evil. Mani and his followers were martyred in 276. Nestorian and Manichaean missionaries competed with each other for converts along the silk road

 Trade became an important part of Central Asian life.  Paintings found in Iranian homes show people wearing Chinese silks and riding on horses and camels.  The paintings also show an avid interest in Buddhism which competed with Nestorianism and Zoroastrianism.

 The invention of the stirrup was a major advancement in military technology.  The invention of the stirrup gave riders greater stability in the saddle.  This gave him the ability to charge his enemy at a full charge w/o fear of falling off of his mount.  The stirrup would make possible the armored knights who dominated the battlefields of EUROPE!!!!!!!!!!

 wg wg

 The Indian Ocean Maritime system was a trade network across the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.  We do not know much about the people who were involved in this trade network but we do know that they did create a strong economic and social ties b/w the coastal lands of East Africa, southern Arabia, the Persian Gulf, India, SE Asia, and southern China.

 In the South China Sea with the Chinese, Malays, and Indonesians  East coast of India to the islands of SE Asia, where Indians and Malays were the biggest traders.  West coast of India to the Persian Gulf and the east coast of Africa were sailors and traders were mainly Arabs and Persians.

 If you read the accounts from Herodotus in the fifth century B.C.E. you would think that the Greeks were the first to use the seasonal winds to facilitate their sailing across the Indian Ocean  These voyages had to occur before written record  So we can assume that people who lived near the Indian Ocean, not Mediterranean's were the first to use this method of sailing.

 Compared to Alexander’s square sails the sailors of the Indian Ocean used triangular lateen sails to navigate the winds and also did not use oars as much.  Indian sailors compared to Mediterranean sailors would travel for long periods of time on the open sea w/o sight of land.  This was possible due to the monsoon winds.

 B/c the Indian sailors were out at sea for a much longer time they did not create colonies that would have contact with their homeland  Their colonies would be more independent and develop on their own with less influence from their homeland.

 By 2000 BCE records indicate that there was regular trade b/w Mesopotamia, the islands of the Persian Gulf, and the Indus River Valley  Records also indicate that trading b/w the above groups ended and we see more mention of the relationship b/w Mesopotamia and East Africa more often than India

 Just as the Chinese’s desire for western goods started the Silk Roads, the demand for products by people of the coastal lands inspired mariners to persist in their long ocean voyages.

 Undatable rock painting show an early hunting culture, that would eventually become cattle breeders  The artwork indicates that the cattle breeders were later succeeded by horse herders who drove chariots  The highland rock art indicates that camel riders followed the charioteers

 Trade across the Sahara developed slowly when two local trading systems, one in the southern Sahara and one in the north, were linked  Traders in the southern Sahara had access to desert salt deposits and exported salt to the sub-Saharan regions in return for kola nuts (has caffeine, and chewed individually) and palm oil (used as a cooking oil).

 After 740 C.E. the Berbers found that the southern nomads were getting gold dust from the Niger and other areas of West Africa in exchange for their salt  This opened their eyes to a great business opportunity  A pattern of trade developed in which the Berbers of North Africa traded copper and manufactured goods to the nomads of the southern desert in return for gold

 The kingdom of Ghana was one of the early sub-Saharan beneficiaries of this new trans- Saharan trade in north west Africa  The origins and early history of Ghana are obscure  The first description we have is the eleventh century account by al-Bakri, who described a city of two towns, one a Muslim merchant town and the other the capital of an animist king and his court.

 After 1076 Ghana was weakened by the invasion of the Moroccan Almorovids  Even after the Almorovids retreated from the south, Ghana never recovered its former wealth and status.

 Sub-Saharan Africa is a large area with many different environmental zones and many geographical obstacles to movement

 Sahel (edge of the Sahara Desert)  tropical savanna(grassy lands)  tropical rain forest of the lower Niger and Zaire  savanna area south of the rain forest  steppe and desert below that  temperate highlands of South Africa

 African cultures are highly diverse  There is an estimated 2000 languages spoken  Another reason for the long dominance of “small traditions” is that no foreign power was able to conquer Africa and thus impose a unified “great tradition.”

 Sub-Saharan agriculture had its origins north of the equator and then spread southward. Iron working also began north of the equator and spread southward, reaching southern Africa by 800 C.E.  Linguistic evidence suggests that the spread of iron and other technology in sub-Saharan Africa was the result of a phenomenon known as the Bantu migrations.

 Evidence suggests that the Bantu people spread out toward the east and the south through a series of migrations over the period of the first millennium C.E. By the eight century, Bantu-speaking people had reached East Africa.

 Through the study of language ◦ The Bantu language is the first language of nearly 1/3 of all Africans ◦ There is a group of African languages called the Niger-Congo and there are around 900 languages that make them up ◦ All of the above mentioned languages have a parent-tongue, Proto-Bantu

 It is extremely difficult, sometimes impossible, to trace the dissemination of ideas in preliterate societies  For example, eating pork was restricted or prohibited by religious belief in Southeast Asia, in ancient Egypt, and in eastern Iran  Because Southeast Asia was an early center of pig domestication, scholars hypothesize that the pig and the religious injunctions concerning eating the pig traveled together toward the west. This has not been proven.

 The spread of ideas in a deliberate and organized fashion such that we can trace it is a phenomenon of the first millennium C.E.  This is particularly the case with the spread of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam.

 The spread of Buddhism was facilitated both by royal sponsorship and by the travels of ordinary pilgrims and missionaries.  In India, the Mauryan king Ashoka and King Kanishka of the Kushans actively supported Buddhism.

 Armenia was an important entrepot. An entrepôt (from the French "warehouse") is a trading post where merchandise can be imported and exported without paying import duties, often at a profit. for the Silk Road trade.Frenchwarehouse trading post importedexporteddutiesprofit  Mediterranean states spread Christianity to Armenia in order to bring that kingdom over to its side and thus deprive Iran of control of this area.