Ferdinand Mount · One-Way Traffic: Ancient India

#history #trade #India #China #Rome

The existence of the ‘Silk Road’ is not based on a single shred of historical or material evidence. There was never any such ‘road’ or even a route in the organisational sense, there was no free movement of goods between China and the West until the Mongol Empire in the Middle Ages, silk was by no means the main commodity in trade with the East and there is not a single ancient historical record, neither Chinese nor classical, that even hints at the existence of such a road.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n17/ferdinand-mount/one-way-traffic