The Silk Road officially opened some time around 200BC, when ambassadors from China turned up in Bactria and Parthia. They were looking for allies in a war, but they returned to China with tales of strange lands further to the West. Shortly after that Chinese merchant caravans started arriving in Persia, and the most fascinating trade route in history was well and truly in business.
Two things made the Silk Road possible. The first was the highway system that the Persians built. I've previously written about the King's Messengers. They could get a message from one end of the Empire to the other in an incredible three days. The main east-west arterial was called the Royal Road, but it wasn't long before it turned into the Middle East section of the Silk Road. The other building block was that the Han Dynasty took over in China. The Han assigned troops to keep the roads safe, so that traders had a chance to cross the steppes without being hit by nomad bandits.
By far the biggest trading item was the Chinese wonder-material, an astounding item called silk. Persians, Greeks, and later on, Romans, were willing to spend very large amounts of gold to get silk. (Or more accurately, the wives were willing to spend very large amounts of their husbands' money.)
My heroine Diotima acquires some silk in The Ionia Sanction, which she later uses to make a dress. I made a comment at the time that this made her the first woman in Europe to wear a silk dress. But my stories are set in the fifth century BC, and the Silk Road didn't open until the second century. Can Diotima possibly get silk 300 years before the Silk Road exists?
Yes she can. There was informal trading before the famous road opened. The reason we know this is rather interesting.
Wherever you find silk in an ancient site, you know for sure there's been contact with China, one way or another. Because China was the only source of silk.
The earliest known silk outside China occurs in the grave goods of four people in Uzbekistan (Bactria, as it was back then). The date on those graves is an incredible 1200BC. That's a minimum, they might be a few hundred years older.
Now Uzbekistan is not far from China, but it's definitely not a silk-producing region, so the silk only got there by trade. Whoever got that silk to Bactria was a serious adventurer, but it's certain someone did it. From about 500BC onwards, once the silk makes it to Bactria it can get onto the Persian road system.
The next appearance of silk comes in 1070 BC. In 1993, a team reported that they had found traces of silk in the hair of an Egyptian mummy. That's an Egyptian mummy, with silk in 1070BC!
I personally rate the abilities of ancient people highly, but even I found this hard to believe. I traced the claim. It appears in correspondence to the science journal Nature. It's correspondence, not a refereed paper, but as far as I know the claim was never refuted, but nor was the test confirmed. Nevertheless that makes the idea highly credible. That's good enough if you're a writer of historical fiction.
So it seems possible if not likely that Chinese goods were trickling into Persia and Egypt starting five hundred years before the time of Nico and Diotima.
The Marathon Conspiracy on sale for $1.99
The Marathon Conspiracy ebook version is on sale at both Barnes & Noble and Amazon for a mere $1.99.Believe it or not, I didn't know this was happening until people mentioned it on twitter. It's part of a promotion of detective stories, that ends on 23 March 2015.
Hurry now while stocks last!
A Corinthian helmet with a skull inside, found at Marathon
This picture has been doing the rounds on twitter. It was pointed out to me by the excellent Loretta Ross (who as it happens is a debut author!), taken from the twitter account of @History-Pics.
The skull at bottom was found inside the helmet! It was found on the plain of Marathon, where as you surely know was once fought a famous battle. The helmet and skull therefore is usually described as being from the Battle of Marathon.
So are we looking at one of the heroes of Marathon? Well, probably not. But maybe. Since my book The Marathon Conspiracy recounts the battle at once point, I thought I'd go through the pros and cons of this rather remarkable find:
First off, it's genuine. This is a for-real Corinthian helmet that dates to the time of Marathon, plus or minus a few decades. We are absolutely looking at a classical Greek warrior.
The Corinthian style was very popular so it's no problem that it was found at a place where only Athenians fought.
This helmet and skull is old news. It was discovered in the 1800s by inquisitive amateurs. They claimed they found it at Marathon. By modern standards the provenance is horribly broken. By the standards of Victorian England there's no problem; they're probably telling the truth.
After the battle the Athenians counted their dead. There were 192 fallen heroes. They were buried under a mound at the southern end of the battlefield. The dead were cremated, a little unusually for the time but not outrageously so. This skull was found elsewhere on the battlefield. The only way this could be an Athenian from the famous battle would be if the Athenians somehow managed to miss one of the dead. Since they also buried the Persian dead (their bones were found underneath a vineyard to the north of the battlefield) and since the site was revisited several times over the following days, it seems hard to believe they missed one of their own.
The Athenian casualty list was made public at the time (and parts have been recovered). If a casualty wasn't on the list, but never came home, someone was bound to say, "Where's Uncle Bob?" Bob would have been found for sure, because the men who fell at Marathon were treated like Trojan Heroes.
Here's a big problem: in those days, armour was always recovered before a burial. This was expensive stuff. It would typically go to the warrior's heir, or be snaffled by someone from the other side. It might seem a little creepy to go into battle wearing armour that someone had died in, but that's how they did it.
So for those reasons it's far from obvious that this guy fought at Marathon. He might have died on the plain any time from a few decades before to a few decades after. He probably wasn't murdered (though that thought crossed my mind) because the helmet is still there. Any criminal would have taken it.
So the skull in the helmet remains a mystery!
The skull at bottom was found inside the helmet! It was found on the plain of Marathon, where as you surely know was once fought a famous battle. The helmet and skull therefore is usually described as being from the Battle of Marathon.
So are we looking at one of the heroes of Marathon? Well, probably not. But maybe. Since my book The Marathon Conspiracy recounts the battle at once point, I thought I'd go through the pros and cons of this rather remarkable find:
First off, it's genuine. This is a for-real Corinthian helmet that dates to the time of Marathon, plus or minus a few decades. We are absolutely looking at a classical Greek warrior.
The Corinthian style was very popular so it's no problem that it was found at a place where only Athenians fought.
This helmet and skull is old news. It was discovered in the 1800s by inquisitive amateurs. They claimed they found it at Marathon. By modern standards the provenance is horribly broken. By the standards of Victorian England there's no problem; they're probably telling the truth.
After the battle the Athenians counted their dead. There were 192 fallen heroes. They were buried under a mound at the southern end of the battlefield. The dead were cremated, a little unusually for the time but not outrageously so. This skull was found elsewhere on the battlefield. The only way this could be an Athenian from the famous battle would be if the Athenians somehow managed to miss one of the dead. Since they also buried the Persian dead (their bones were found underneath a vineyard to the north of the battlefield) and since the site was revisited several times over the following days, it seems hard to believe they missed one of their own.
The Athenian casualty list was made public at the time (and parts have been recovered). If a casualty wasn't on the list, but never came home, someone was bound to say, "Where's Uncle Bob?" Bob would have been found for sure, because the men who fell at Marathon were treated like Trojan Heroes.
Here's a big problem: in those days, armour was always recovered before a burial. This was expensive stuff. It would typically go to the warrior's heir, or be snaffled by someone from the other side. It might seem a little creepy to go into battle wearing armour that someone had died in, but that's how they did it.
So for those reasons it's far from obvious that this guy fought at Marathon. He might have died on the plain any time from a few decades before to a few decades after. He probably wasn't murdered (though that thought crossed my mind) because the helmet is still there. Any criminal would have taken it.
So the skull in the helmet remains a mystery!
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