Always good to be reminded how much of the world was connected by trade, a long time ago. The romans had "taprobrane" as a source of Pearls: it's Sri Lanka. They'd probably (possibly?) never been there, but they knew people who knew people who traded along the silk road, who got pearls from Sri Lanka.
Trade surpasses religious barriers oftentimes. Vikings had offered service to the Byzantine courts presumably sailing down the rivers from the north, or round the coast. Maybe one of them brought something back north, and it wound up moving around in north europe. Walrus ivory would have been a valuable counter-trade going south, or Amber.
Oh there were a good number of romans who had been to india and sri lanka, there were even a good number of roman traders from egypt who sailed as far as malaysia which they called the Golden Chersonese. They didnt really know about china but had some vague ideas that a large empire existed in the east names sinae but iirc they did send a diplomatic mission to it which ended up in vietnam being robbed if I remember right before ending up before the han dynasty with very little tribute and generally being a bit of a dissapointment. There were several other merchants and diplomatic missions over the years but in general it was of minor importance to both empires, far outside their spheres.
I'm usually annoyed as fuck by the idiotic cries of "Wikipedia isn't a source, ha ha ha!" all over the Internet; on the contrary, WP is usually not only an adequate but actually a pretty good first source for ordinary online discussions (and then if you really want to get into details, continue from WP's footnotes).
But in this particular case, with these particular WP articles... Yeah yeah, you were probably kidding. But there are also more serious articles on the subject. Like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Roman_relations .
I'd have guessed that goods from Sri Lanka got to Rome via the Red Sea?
My recollection of an "Empire" podcast episode I listened to recently (warmly recommended!) is that as much as half of all Rome's tax was raised at Egyptian ports on goods coming up the Red Sea.
As I understand it, the Silk Road only became important when the sea route was closed. It lost its importance 800 years later when the Portugese found the sea route around Africa.
yes that might be a shorter path than overland. it would be my guess that in time deeper than roman, egyptian cash and goods were attractive to people in distant lands. Without going full Thor Heyerdal "Ra" they would have been capable of sailing coastal routes round if not a more direct route across the Arabian Seas
But it's equally likely they traded indirectly with any of the coastal economies around the Gulf, and Horn of Africa.
>as much as half of all Rome's tax was raised at Egyptian ports
Interesting and makes sense to me. I remember reading a long time ago, when the Eastern Empire lost Egypt to the Arabs, it was considered a huge major disaster for them.
There was a recent book[1] by Cat Jarman called The River Kings that discusses the Vikings’ expansive trade with the east. It was decent and was quite popular after publication.
Also related are Ahmad ibn Fadlan's writings, a 10th century traveler from Baghdad who described the Varangians, Swedish vikings who traveled to modern-day Ukraine and Russia, who also ended up in the Byzantine army (or something like that, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangians). Eaters of the Dead, a book by Michael Crighton combines those writings plus the story of Beowulf into a book, which was later turned into a film, The 13th Warrior.
How trade may have worked in the ancient times is one of the most fascinating aspects about history for me. There is the Nebra sky disc[1], which is estimated to be 3500 years old. The gold seems to have come from Cornwall/England, the Copper came from Austria, and the disc itself may have been manufactured in Anatolia. This is not halfway around the world, but I wonder who did those trades. Was it individual adventurers or something like armies bringing the materials from one place to another? Was there an existing trade network in place?
Perhaps not directly trade related but there's also the recent discovery that the 6 tonne Altar Stone at Stone Henge was transported there from 700km away in Scotland at around 2600BCE.
> Vikings had offered service to the Byzantine courts presumably sailing down the rivers from the north, or round the coast. Maybe one of them brought something back north
"Väringar"[0], traded, traveled, and fought from the Baltic to the Mediterranean sea. And they most certainly brought a lot back home.
Trade surpasses religious barriers oftentimes. Vikings had offered service to the Byzantine courts presumably sailing down the rivers from the north, or round the coast. Maybe one of them brought something back north, and it wound up moving around in north europe. Walrus ivory would have been a valuable counter-trade going south, or Amber.