Echoes of the Silk Route

One of the major reasons for me wanting to explore this part of the world was the lure of the legendary Silk Route, illustrated by a cheerily decorated sign outside the city walls to give you a very rough idea of where Khiva is. This bill board owed more in its heritage to the ancient sea faring maps that declaimed “There be dragons!” wherever their knowledge was rather sketchy, than to modern cartography. Britain was depicted – roughly the same size as Spain, a war horse leapt across the Caucasus, as elephants stormed through Afghanistan, and a man with a donkey cart trekked stolidly through Russia. This display of amateur optimism appealed to me and consolidated the feeling that we had stepped back in time: albeit to a time when plastic sandals were in abundance.

In terms of history and anthropology, rather than romantic aberration, the Silk Route describes a series of inter linking trade routes plied by caravan and sailing vessel that cross Asia from Xi’an in China to the heart of Europe. Not exactly the super highway of its day, but the impact of the journeys across these routes was monumental. It was the cornerstone of the success of the great ancient civilisations of China, ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, India and Rome, thereby shaping the essence of the modern world.

The evolution of the Silk Route is a story worthy of a Hollywood epic. With the advent of domesticated animals enabling greater mobility (the ox, horse and camel) in additional to greater advancement in waterborne transport, water and land routes opened up allowing passage across the great landmass of Asia to Europe without disturbance to established agricultural lands, creating practical conditions for entrepreneurial merchants to branch out. By 4,000 BC communities living in the Sahara had imported domestic animals from Asia; Egyptians were trading with Palestinians and lapis lazuli was being traded from its only known source in the ancient world Badakstan (modern Afghanistan) as far as Mesopotamia and Eqypt! The establishment of a recognised trading route was given a huge boost by the Persian Royal Road. In Herodotus’ time (475BC) this was already 2,800km long, running from Susa on the lower Tigris to Smyrna (Izmir) on the Turkish turquoise coast. This was efficiently maintained and protected by the Achaemenid Empire with such facilities as postal stations and relays along its length. By using fresh horses and riders, royal couriers could transport a message from one end to the other in just nine days, a journey that an average traveller would take three months to make.

The next great expansion of the ancient transport network occurred under the aegis of Alexander the Great who moved deep into Central Asia, founding Alexandria Eschate (“Alexandria the Furthest”, which is no under statement) in what is now Tajikistan. His legacy was promulgated by the Ptolemies in Egypt (promoting trade with Mesopotamia, India and East Africa) as well as the Greeks acting through their administration of the Seleucid Empire and their establishment of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom.

For many of the tribes along the Silk Route, Greek rule was replaced by the Kushana - Chinese hoards from the East having been displaced from their homelands by Hun invasions from Mongolia. This race exacted power from the Ganges to the Caspian Sea and from the Tarim Basin to Northern Iran thus linking Eastern China and India with the Greek and Roman worlds of the West. The Roman historian Florus describes the cosmopolitan nature of court life in the days of the Roman Emperor Augustus (27 – 14BC): "Even the rest of the nations of the world which were not subject to the imperial sway were sensible of its grandeur, and looked with reverence to the Roman people, the great conqueror of nations. Thus even Scythians and Samarians sent envoys to seek the friendship of Rome. Nay, the Seres [Chinese] came likewise, and the Indians who dwelt beneath the vertical sun, bringing presents of precious stones and pearls and elephants, but thinking all of less moment than the vastness of the journey which they had undertaken, and which they said had occupied four years. In truth it needed but to look at their complexion to see that they were people of another world than ours."

The Silk Route villages weren’t just mud hut outposts either. Embassies of the Han dynasty sprang up along the route in around 130 BC, alert to the opportunities emerging and new ways of making money! The Chinese Emperor Wudi recognised the potential of the Silk Route and is credited with remarking: “The Son of Heaven….reasoned thus: Ferghana and the possessions of Bactria and Parthia are large countries, full of rare things, with a population living in fixed abodes and given to occupations somewhat identical with those of the Chinese people, but with weak armies, and placing great value on the rich produce of China.”

The Chinese were also exceptionally impressed by the Heavenly Horses of the Dayan people. These horses actually exist and are now known as the Akhal Teke. Alexander’s insurmountable Bucephalus was said to be one. They have an unusual metallic sheen to their coat and were described as having; ‘a back like a tiger, sweat[ing] blood, able to cover 300 miles a day and be descended from heaven.’ To the Chinese – used to sturdy Steppe ponies – they must have been the equivalent of a massive advance in speed and style, any Emperor worth his salt would have coveted them.

Given that the Chinese were a huge driving force behind this international trade and communication is can be no surprise to see evidence of Chinese goods scattered along the way. Silk was an invention of the Chinese, its discovery attributed to Empress Xi Ling-Shi, the wife of the Yellow Emperor (2800 BC) who found some silkworms eating her husband’s mulberry leaves. She collected some cocoons and was sitting down to tea when a cocoon dropped into the boiling water. She then noticed a fine thread detach itself from the cocoon and found that she was able to wind it around her finger. Following this discovery she persuaded her husband to give her a grove of mulberry trees where she worked to domesticate the worms and invented the silk spinning wheel and loom. Using the Silk Route, trade in Chinese silk made its way as far as the Roman empire and was the favoured form of dress amongst the nobility, even though they didn’t’ really understand where it came from: “The Seres [Chinese], are famous for the woollen substance obtained from their forests; after a soaking in water they comb off the white down of the leaves….” (Piny the Elder) - a fertile imagination. Silk was so in vogue in Rome, so expensive and so racy, that many Romans objected on moral and economic grounds. The Roman Senate indeed issued edicts to ban silk clothing in vain – complaining that they were decadent and immoral: “I can see clothes of silk, if materials that do not hide the body, nor even one’s decency, can be called clothes….wretched frocks of maids’ labour so that the adulteress may be visible through her thin dress, so that her husband has no more acquaintance than any outsider or foreigner with his wife’s body!” (Seneca the Younger.). Wow! And people think mini skirts are racy!

But it wasn’t just mercurial trade that was going on. As people passed along the route they brought with them all other aspects of their lives; language, religion, art and innovation – and naturally, being away from home for quite so long, some of them fell prey to the charms of local girls as evidenced by paintings of a blue eyed Central Asian monk from 9C BC and sculpture of a Westerner sitting on a camel from the Tang dynasty – the Silk Route equivalent of a souvenir donkey from Spain perhaps? Importantly, this route also facilitated the spread of Buddhism from its emergence in the Indian sub continent, east into China and later introduced Islamic religions into Central Asia.

It is often in art that this cultural, religious and political melange asserts itself. It is possible to trace the journey of the Buddha in art from its origin in northern India, through Central Asia and China, reaching Korea in 4C AD and Japan in 6C AD. By this stage Buddha statues were being manufactured in China, but dressed in a style derived from Pakistan! Other, more subtle influences may be discovered as well, such as in Hercules’ inspiration in the Nio guardian deities in Japanese Buddhist temples and Herakles’ use in representing Vajrapani – the protector of the Buddha in China, Korea and Japan. The Greek god of the wind – Boreas – also pops up in Japan as the Shinto wind god Fujin and the Greek motif of the floral scroll was an extremely popular export, appearing in wooden archaeological remains in the Tarim Basin (2C AD), on Chinese tiles (4 – 6C AD) and on Japanese roof tiles (7C AD) still depicting vines and grapes – hardly everyday images to the average Japanese.

At this stage, and later into the Middle Ages, the East was rich in innovation and the Silk Route hastened its entrance into Europe. Through this route came printing, gunpowder, the astrolabe and the compass – having far reaching effects on our own civilisations. Sight of the inventions making their way west acted as catalysts to European inventors determined not to be undermined by the yellow barbarians. Fra Mauro’s map (1469) – one of the first practical world maps was described by a cotemporary as being: “an improved copy of the one brought from Cathy by Marco Polo” and the Chinese junks observed by travellers added enthusiasm to the movement to develop larger ships in Europe.

This didn’t last. With the disintegration of the Mongol Empire came a gradual diminution in the Silk Route’s hegemony. This situation was hastened by the effect of the Black Death, the decay of the Byzantine Empire and the increase in sedentary powers throughout this region leading to a rise of more fragmented and territorial nation states. The Silk Route ceased trade in silk around 1400 AD thereafter entailing arduous naval voyages to take advantage of the riches of the East.