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  3. Empires of Ancient Eurasia
  • Cited by 48
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    • Publisher:
      Cambridge University Press
      Publication date:
      20 April 2018
      03 May 2018
      ISBN:
      9781316335567
      9781107114968
      9781107535435
      DOI:
      https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316335567
      Dimensions:
      (228 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.56kg, 316 Pages
      Dimensions:
      (228 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.46kg, 316 Pages
      • Subjects:
      Ancient History, Classical Studies, History, Regional History after 1500, Global History
      Series:
      New Approaches to Asian History
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    Subjects:
    Ancient History, Classical Studies, History, Regional History after 1500, Global History
    Series:
    New Approaches to Asian History
    Information

    Book description

    The Silk Roads are the symbol of the interconnectedness of ancient Eurasian civilizations. Using challenging land and maritime routes, merchants and adventurers, diplomats and missionaries, sailors and soldiers, and camels, horses and ships, carried their commodities, ideas, languages and pathogens enormous distances across Eurasia. The result was an underlying unity that traveled the length of the routes, and which is preserved to this day, expressed in common technologies, artistic styles, cultures and religions, and even disease and immunity patterns. In words and images, Craig Benjamin explores the processes that allowed for the comingling of so many goods, ideas, and diseases around a geographical hub deep in central Eurasia. He argues that the first Silk Roads era was the catalyst for an extraordinary increase in the complexity of human relationships and collective learning, a complexity that helped drive our species inexorably along a path towards modernity.

    Reviews

    'Craig Benjamin places the pastoral nomads of Central Asia - and their horses - at the center of the story of the First Silk Road Era, convincingly arguing that the Yuezhi and Xiongnu, two militarized nomadic confederations rarely even mentioned in surveys of world history, are responsible for this dramatic period of trade and cultural exchange.'

    Merry Wiesner-Hanks - Editor-in-Chief, Cambridge World History

    'A lucid, original, expert and up-to-date account of the emergence and evolution of the silk roads that began to weave together all the major civilizations of Europe, both by land and sea, early in the first Millennium CE. A great introduction to one of world history’s most important themes.'

    David Christian - Macquarie University, Sydney

    'Craig Benjamin’s Empires of Ancient Eurasia, [is] an enthralling introduction to this 'First Silk Roads' era of long-distance exchange by land and sea. Benjamin begins his tale with the migration of pastoral Steppe nomads in the second century BC that traced out the first route west, and then charts the rise of the Chinese Han dynasty who controlled the business end, producing silk and other luxury goods.'

    Josephine Crawley Quinn Source: The Times Literary Supplement

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