[HN Gopher] Manuscripts reveal the details of everyday life on t...
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Manuscripts reveal the details of everyday life on the Silk Road
Author : diodorus
Score : 89 points
Date : 2024-09-30 20:43 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.historytoday.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.historytoday.com)
| echelon_musk wrote:
| > Zhang Jinshan signed his name, in a cheeky manner, in Sogdian
| script as kyms'n and cw kyms'n.
|
| It's a shame that it wasn't explained what makes this signature
| unusual!
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Unusual because in sogdian, not hanzi?
|
| more like
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d1/So...
| less like Zhang Jin Shan ?
|
| .noitcerid lamron eht ot etisoppo etorw eh snoitnem osla ti
| taht eton
| Rocka24 wrote:
| I assumed that the Sogdian script iself was the cheeky part. I
| imagine if they had just lost a war to the Khotanese it
| would've been quite the inside joke of the time.
| tobylane wrote:
| I've bought William Dalrymple's new book The Golden Road for my
| dad's birthday, which I plan to borrow and read before seeing the
| new British Museum and Library's exhibitions. I wonder if these
| will prompt more articles like this.
|
| https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/140886441X
| https://www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/silk-roads
| https://silkroad.seetickets.com/timeslots/filter/a-silk-road...
| adamc wrote:
| Thanks for the link. Weirdly, the hardcover (not yet out) costs
| less than the paperback for the US.
| https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Road-Ancient-India-Transformed...
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Two developments that turned the silk road into a backwater:
|
| -- when the portuguese and spanish started blue-water sailing
| (~1500), they opened alternative, cheaper, channels for goods
| which had once passed mostly overland
|
| -- when the british industrialised (~1780), textiles went from
| being an expensive trade good (provided by a decentralised
| "cottage industry": anyone with a loom and labour could make
| them) to cheap stuff (provided by centralised factories).
|
| [consider the fates of Old West towns not on the railroad, or Red
| America towns in "flyover country" not on the freeway: there were
| some choices to make at the Taklamakan Desert, but otherwise
| cities of the time were either on the Silk Road, or they were off
| of it:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road#/media/File:Seidenst... .
| These days, instead of places like Palmyra or Bagdad or
| Samarkand, what's "on it" are no longer cities but strategic
| points like Suez or Hormuz or Malacca]
|
| EDIT: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2L2U32-BvQ
| trhway wrote:
| Don't forget Suez Canal (1869). Russian officers who took
| Ottoman city Dogubayazit in 1854 and 1878 wrote that that Silk
| Road crossroad city flourishing in 1854 was in decline in 1878
| because of the trade through it vanishing due to the Canal.
|
| (in Russian)
| https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogubaiazit#Tranzitnyi_put'
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| True, and looks like the portuguese may only have been
| inspired to sink the initial R&D into disruption because the
| ottomans, having taken Constantinople, were charging* too
| much as gatekeepers:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_discovery_of_the_se.
| ..
|
| Lagniappe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mare_clausum#/media/
| File:Iberi... (can you spot Brazil in this projection?)
|
| EDIT: note also how the Treaty of Alcacovas (1479) drew a
| line across the Atlantic which is still largely conserved by
| the sea boundary between USEUCOM and USAFRICOM
|
| * EDIT2: could they have charged just enough to make the age
| of exploration look risky and too expensive, not risky but
| potentially cheaper?
| wslh wrote:
| This is an English translation: https://ru-m-wikipedia-
| org.translate.goog/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_...
| Yeul wrote:
| It's actually amazing how even as early as the 16th century
| Europeans had the superior naval power. It was like shooting
| fish in a barrel. It wasn't until the battle of Tsushima that
| the tide shifted.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Book tip:
|
| I really enjoyed reading "City of Fortune: How Venice Ruled the
| Seas", which taught me that the main thing Venice had going for
| it was controlling much of the Silk Road trade until Vasco da
| Gama doomed it in 1498.
|
| Link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812980220/
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| That's also my headcanon for the Renaissance: when
| Constantinople fell in 1453, there was a lot of impetus for
| skilled emigration, and as the italian cities had been the
| traditional trade partners, they were a logical place for
| incoming high human capital "Martians"* to wind up, fresh off
| the boat but rapidly reconstituting their networks:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople#Impact_...
|
| * compare the translatlantic wave of the 1930s?
| Mistletoe wrote:
| There is a really cool documentary on Amazon Prime about the Silk
| Road that I recommend. The guy goes to cities that were on it and
| tours them in the present. You can see how they have changed and
| how powerful they used to be.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/The-Silk-Road/dp/B07W4XYPPC
| neelm wrote:
| This is a great book to learn about the Silk Road in particular
| Central Asia and the role Russia and UK played in its
| transformation. It reads like a Game of Thrones novel.
|
| Interesting note is Russia colonized Central Asia with the end
| goal of invading India.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Great-Game-Struggle-Central-Kodansha/...
| 73kl4453dz wrote:
| Kipling's _Kim_ is a Heinlein-juvenile take on the "Great
| Game"
| bnewman85 wrote:
| i never understood the concept of the Silk Road, isn't it just
| meant to roughly refer to the conceptual east-west trade links
| through time. There isn't an "everyday life on the Silk Road"
| since that concept spans millenia and constantly changing
| landscape of nations and peoples
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| The article talks about how the Silk Road was created as a
| concept out of nothing by a historian. Interesting how a
| century and a half later most of us accept that man's framing
| without ever questioning it.
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(page generated 2024-10-04 23:01 UTC)