What were the reasons why they did not try to go to those lands in case they knew they existed?
What were the reasons why they did not try to go to those lands in case they knew they existed?
Odd question. They went to India in mass via merchants using large durable sailing ships the monsoon season leaving from the red sea. They obviously did not have a great ideal of the geography of SE Asia or China but they knew it was there but their merchants made it their as well. The knew of the steppes because you know they owned the Crimea. They sailed around Ireland and probably Iceland. But if you mean map paint like a game why would they? India was too far - any General who marched through Parthia and won great victories in India would just declare a separate Empire or state. Places in far Northern Europe were more or less cold and lacked economic value or population centers to control. The steppe just ask Darius what happened when he tried to impose his will the Scythians they simply moved away. They you could sail around Africa but economically nobody really got much out of the effort. The same ships that went to India traded well down east of Africa past what is now Tanzania. But sea conditions and weather made the east eastern cost difficult and there was not really good wealthy civilizations to trade with or overrun at the time
Last edited by conon394; June 09, 2019 at 11:20 AM.
IN PATROCINIVM SVB Dromikaites
'One day when I fly with my hands - up down the sky, like a bird'
But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place; some swearing, some crying for surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.
Hyperides of Athens: We know, replied he, that Antipater is good, but we (the Demos of Athens) have no need of a master at present, even a good one.
To reinforce what Conan has said, the Romans knew about India even before they took over Ptolemaic Egypt from Cleopatra VII, because of the legendary lucrative trade spanning from the Red Sea ports of Egypt all the way to Southeast Asia. Roman merchants constantly visited India from Egypt, bypassing their Parthian rivals in Mesopotamia and Persia by sailing through the Indian Ocean. The ancient Roman guidebook Periplus of the Erythraean Sea from the 1st century AD intricately explains trade routes and ports of call stretching as far as Burma and Thailand, arguably even Vietnam and southern China considering the mysterious "Cattigara" in Ptolemy's Geography that now seems to be the modern site of Oc Eo. Considering the Antonine-period Roman artifacts founds there, this was most likely the site where ancient Chinese historians describe the Romans arriving in an embassy in 166 AD.
However, the Romans only vaguely knew about China. They called it Serica, the far eastern country where all the silk came from, while the historian Florus claimed that the Seres were among the foreign diplomats who visited Rome during the reign of Augustus (along with Sarmatians, Scythians, and Indians). Later Byzantine/Eastern Roman authors like Cosmas Indicopleustes and Theophylact Simocatta seem to have had a much firmer understanding about how to reach China, while Simocatta was even able to relay decent information about its politics and recent history of division and reunification under the Sui and Tang emperors. The Romans knew nothing about Mongolia and it wasn't until medieval Europeans in the 13th century interacting with the Mongol Empire and the Yuan dynasty that they visited the region of Mongolia and wrote about it (and yes, this involved a lot more people than just Marco Polo, the stereotypical guy you think about instead of others like French royal diplomats and Catholic missionaries).
As for southern Africa, there weren't any great cities or ports to visit, unlike Punt in Somalia and of course Aksumite Ethiopia & Eritrea further north along the Horn of Africa. The Romans were perhaps most familiar with the Kingdom of Kush in Sudan considering Nubia's proximity, sharing a border with Roman Egypt to the south. The Romans knew about the exploits of previous Carthaginians like Hanno the Navigator in the Pacific and West African coast, while the Roman client ruler Juba II of Mauretania sent an expedition to the Canary Islands. In 19 BC the sub-Saharan expedition of Cornelius Balbus allegedly made it as far as the River Niger and also conquered the Garamantes in the deep Libyan interior. The explorers under Suetonius Paulinus probably reached the Senegal River in 41 AD. In 50 AD Septimius Flaccus reached Lake Chad, which the Romans called the "lake of hippopotamus and rhinoceros", and even left a small garrison there for a while. He also called the territory the land of "Aethiopioi", comparing their very dark-skinned physical features to Ethiopians & Nubians.
As for the Pontic Steppe of Russia & Ukraine, the Romans were very familiar with the northern shores of the Black Sea. This was the land of the Scythians as well as Pontic Greeks who had colonized the region centuries earlier and built port cities. The Romans eventually directly controlled the Bulgarian shores of the Black Sea after annexing their client state of the Odrysian Kingdom of Thrace, while they maintained a client state in the Crimean Peninsula, the Bosporan Kingdom, which had previously flourished during the Hellenistic period.
Did Hanno reached the Pacific beneath the Marsmoon?The Romans knew about the exploits of previous Carthaginians like Hanno the Navigator in the Pacific and West African coast, while the Roman client ruler Juba II of Mauretania sent an expedition to the Canary Islands.
Cause tomorrow is a brand-new day
And tomorrow you'll be on your way
Don't give a damn about what other people say
Because tomorrow is a brand-new day
in the Pacific... I see, Magalhães and Hanno were best friends.
---
In the west Africa, Hanno reached a country of elephants,than another of crocodiles and hippopotamuses. In a land where lava streams from a volcanic mountain, he hunted beasts "with shaggy bodies, whom our interpreters called gorillas". If these any of these details are reliable, Hanno must have got as far as Sierra Leone and perhaps saw Mount Cameroon.
----
Let's hear P.E.H. Hair, The Periplus of Hanono in the History and Historiography of Black Africa
"The brief text is of doubtful and at best partial historical authenticity...At least as far as black Africa is concerned, it must be questioned whether the Periplus is worth a fraction of the intensive scholarly effort that has been spent on it during the four hundred years..it is wholly fiction?..for whether based on fact the Periplus is patently a piece of literature of a kind which does not afford precise historical information..:"
--
The Chinese in the Roman Empire,Roman Views of the Chinese in Antiquity - Sino-Platonic Papers
----In the third century AD, the chronicler Solinus said,
"When we returned from the Ocean Sythique and the Caspian Sea, we headed toward the Eastern Ocean. From the beginning of the coast, we found deep snows, long deserts, cruel people and places, cannibals and the most terrible wild beasts, whichmake this half of the road practically impassable. Whoever reaches the end of this road will find a mountain that dominates the sea, which the barbarians call “Tabis.”Passing through it, we continued to traverse immense deserts. After arriving on the coast in the northeast, and crossing vast uninhabited regions, the first people we hear about are the “Seres”; they sprinkle water on the leaves of certain trees, to make them humid so to produce a substance that will turn into skeins similar to cotton. This is called “sericum” [silk], which we know and use, which awakens a passion in women for luxury, and with which even our men dress now, leaving their bodies on display.The “Seres” are civilized and peaceful people, but avoid contact with other people,refusing to trade with other nations. Every time they cross the river and out of their country to do business, they do not use their language, or talk; they make an estimate with a look, and stipulate a price. They prefer, by the way, only to sell their products,but do not like to buy our goods"
Maecenas, a Trump's ancestor, was always worrying about what the Chinese were up to,"anxious for the city, you fear what the Chinese are planning" (Horace)
Last edited by Ludicus; June 10, 2019 at 05:51 PM.
Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
Charles Péguy
Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
Thomas Piketty
Obviously Russia only became a toponym in the last few centuries of the East Roman Empire (c. 1000?). We know East Roman missionaries travelled in those parts in fierce competition with the much braver Irish monks who saved civilisation by inventing whiskey and other lies. Its unlikely many Romans travelled into the region now known as Russia until the evolution of the Atlantic economy, bu some feisty Roman merchant may have toiled across the portages to the source of European amber.
I think the word China came into use in the 1500's, later even than Russia. I was taught decades ago it was related to the Ch'in or Qin dynasty but the Oxford says its derived from Persian. Its possible the Romans never heard the word China, although Romans going back to the Principate and even the late Republic knew of the place.
The Republican Romans knew of Africa as a province of Libya, a wealthy agricultural region and home of their arch enemy Carthage. I doubt they visited sub Saharan Libya (that is Africa) and there was little in Libya (outside Africa, or rather in Africa outside Libya) to interest them.
The Romans knew "Indos" as a river and an ethonym from our friends the Hellenes. India is the Latin toponym, ripped straight from the Hellenic India or Indica. The Romans, whether East, West, Republican, Early High and Late Classical all knew of and visited India.
The Mongols were an Altaic group that appear in history only eight hundred years ago: the late East Romans knew of them, but its unlikely many Romans visited the central Asian steppes, forests or deserts that were their abode. perhaps some earnest Orthodox missionaries visited the Great Khan? I don't think the legions ever travelled there, outside the pages of cheap Italian AH novels.
Last edited by Cyclops; June 10, 2019 at 06:02 PM.
Jatte lambastes Calico Rat
Oops! I meant to say the Atlantic Ocean, guys. Nice catch. That was definitely a brain fart in written form.
Wait, what? Why is he doubting its authenticity exactly?
True, but the proto-Mongolic peoples preceding the Mongols of Genghis Khan would have spoken earlier languages that were at least very similar the Mongolian that evolved by the 13th century. These were the mainly the Xiongnu and Xianbei, early Imperial China's greatest nomadic enemies living along Tianshan range in the Tarim Basin, the northern steppe, the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, and parts of nearby Manchuria. In either case the Roman concept of China was cloudy to begin with so obviously they wouldn't have the foggiest clue about the size, location, or significance of Mongolia.
As for late Eastern Roman interactions with the Mongols of the High Middle Ages, the Byzantines actually intermarried with the Mongol royal families. LOL. Not kidding. They kept up a regular correspondence, actually, so when Kublai Khan in Beijing (Khanbaliq) wrote to the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople, he was basically sending text messages to his in-laws. The Chinese silk trade was clearly penetrated with a bit of espionage and stealth by Nestorian Christian monks working on behalf of emperor Justinian, as written about by the Eastern Roman historian Procopius in the 6th century. That was perhaps the beginning of the Eastern Roman interactions with China. Chinese records indicate that Constans II Pogonatos and Michael VII Doukas sent diplomats to Imperial China during the Tang and Song dynasties, respectively.
It wasn't until the 13th century that a diplomat from China came to Byzantium and the royal courts in Europe. That guy was Rabban Bar Sauma, a Nestorian Christian Uyghur Turk born in Zhongdu under Jurchen-led Jin-dynasty rule (a city soon to be known as Khanbaliq under the Mongols, and later Beijing under the native Ming dynasty). Bar Sauma didn't just arrive at the court of the Byzantine Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos, though, he also paid a little visit to Pope Nicholas IV, Philip IV of France, and Edward I of England, yes, that Edward, the Longshanks one in Braveheart who went on a Crusade in the Holy Land before attempting to hammer the Scots.
This 15th Century copy of a map originally made by 2nd Century Claudius Ptolemy showcases the extent of roman knowledge:
Were they proto-Mongolic? The Khitans are considered para-Mongolic (linguistically at least) and even they appear much later in the region following the Turks. To my knowledge the Mongols originated further North.
Strange, I thought Maecenas had a refined taste in Arts and decent administrative and diplomatic skills.
Last edited by Ἀπολλόδοτος Α΄ ὁ Σω June 12, 2019 at 02:22 PM.
"First get your facts straight, then distort them at your leisure." - Mark Twain
οὐκ ἦν μὲν ἐγώ, νῦν δ' εἰμί· τότε δ' ούκ ἔσομαι, ούδέ μοι μελήσει
Yep, pretty much, and like I mentioned before, Ptolemy demonstrated that he knew a great deal about trade and commerce in southeast Asia. Beyond that he clearly charted the outlines of the South China Sea. His story of a Greek sailor named Alexandros visiting some port named Cattigara in that region nearly validates Chinese histories like the Book of Later Han that talked about Romans (people of the far western empire of "Daqin") arriving in Vietnam before visiting China in the 2nd century AD.
This is still a matter of debate, one without a clear consensus, especially for the murky origins and fate of the Xiongnu. However, whether you classify the ancient Xianbei language as proto-Mongolic or an older sister language as para-Mongolic, we at least know that the Xianbei tongue evolved from that of the Donghu people, the other branch splitting apart to form the Wuhuan nomads. Claus Schönig theorizes that Khitan was a descendant of Xianbei, while Paul Pelliot believed the Wuhuan and Xianbei were both proto-Mongolic peoples. Like the Donghu before them, the Xianbei inhabited Inner Mongolia, so admittedly further south than the territory of Mongolia proper where Genghis Khan unified Mongol tribes. The Xianbei also conquered parts of northern China, of course, since their ethnic group assimilated and their Tuoba clan established the Northern Wei dynasty in the period of division before the Sui reunification.Were they proto-Mongolic? The Khitans are considered para-Mongolic (linguistically at least) and even they appear much later in the region following the Turks. To my knowledge the Mongols originated further North.
In contrast to the Xianbei, the Xiongnu originated even further north, inhabiting Mongolia and parts of Siberia before expanding to control Gansu and Xinjiang in the early 2nd century BC with the flight of the Yuezhi further west into Central Asia. It stands to reason the Xiongnu were proto-Mongolic given their original homeland, although they likely evolved into an amalgamation of different linguistic groups and tribes from various regions as they continued to migrate and morph into something else. That's especially the case after the Chinese Han dynasty subjugated the southern branch and forced the northern branch to flee into Central Asia (hence all the theories, still rather shaky and not entirely proven, about their connection to the Huns that invaded the Eastern & Western Roman Empire).
Related to the discussion about the Xiongnu...
Quoted from 137 ancient human genomes from across the Eurasian steppes (2018):
I haven't checked the credentials of all the authors, but considering there are 77 of them, I assume there are linguists among them. I mention that because I have seen interdisciplinary aspects of genetics papers poorly covered on occasion.Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Yeah, except the first Indo-European expansions. The Yamnaya Culture had developed from two constituent populations but were a pretty homogeneous blend of the two by the time they expanded across the steppe. They developed pastoralism and lactase persistence, which meant they could support a population density many times greater than the hunter-gathers whose territory they were expanding into. The lactase persistence is key, because it meant others couldn't just emulate their means of subsistence and be as successful at it. Which is probably part of the reason why all steppe cultures after the fact had some ancestry from that original expansion.
Genghis Khan centuries after that: "Got milk?"
The Chinese definitely have a hard time consuming milk and dairy based products, although they are becoming less lactose intolerant in modern times due to changing global diets and mass production of cheap, easy fast food (which unsurprisingly contains lots of freaking cheese). For centuries, hell, for millennia, they considered drinking milk or eating dairy products like cheese to be a northern steppe nomadic barbarian thing unfit for their civilization. It did, however, give the nomads that edge they needed and ability to survive in harsh environments, so they could continue surprising nearby settled peoples with raiding and pillaging. I was unaware that the Indo-Europeans of the Bronze Age were the first to be lactase persistent, so cheers to you for teaching me that! I'd rep you for it but I can't, since I rep you too much. Could somebody rep this guy for me?
Is their a less pronounced carbohydrate digestion enzyme/gut flora/tolerance issue with the Mesopotamian/Anatolian farmer wave? I imagine the "barrier" to eating a cereal diet for HGs is lower as it were, but still something. The experience for naive Austra;lian Aboriginal populations is poor dental and digestive health, not just from sugar and alcohol but even from flour.
Makes me think when I share my porridge with Cyclops Jnr every morning what I'm really doing is celebrating twin genocide-by-replacement events. "The oats represent the Borging of Mesolithic Europeans, the milk is for the Yamnaya rapist-warriors, and the salt is the tears of their victims. We add honey at the end because screw the bees, right?"
Jatte lambastes Calico Rat
Yeah, that. In general, hunter-gathers couldn't just switch to agriculture and be fine.
Early adopters of agriculture themselves had a lot of health problems. It’s obvious in their skeletons. But where it initially developed it was more of a mixed subsistence at first, which gave some time for adaptations to develop. Among others, there were insulin adaptations. Populations who have had less time to adapt to a high carbohydrate diet have much higher incidence of type 2 diabetes. Adaptations to alcohol. Water borne pathogens are a lethal threat in higher density pre-modern societies, so being able to drink a beverage with a small amount of alcohol was an advantage, but not so much if it destroyed your health in other ways. What they initially drank had a much lower alcohol content than what is usual today. Population density and living in close proximity to other mammals also selected for various types of disease resistance. Pale complexion seems to be related partly to vitamin D deficiency in agricultural diet/lifestyle. Near Eastern farmers were paler than Northern European hunter-gatherers, obviously the degree of selection also depends on latitude, but that fact indicates diet and lifestyle were stronger selection pressures.
There also seems to have been some gene-culture issues. All the usual scientific caveats about the degree of determinism in behavioral genetics apply, but whereas as it's advantageous for an agriculturalist to not easily get bored, it is advantageous for a hunter-gather to easily get bored. For this reason it seems to have been easier for hunter-gatherers to adapt to semi-nomadic pastoralism than to agriculture, though in both cases there were still population level advantages to being first. In this regard, it seems the ancestors of two major expansions benefited from initially being hunter-gathers along the fringes of where agriculture first developed. Those expansions involved the speakers of the Indo-European languages and the Afroasiatic languages. Though some of the Afroasiatic branches seem to have been first farmers, those that expanded out ahead of agriculture were largely lactose tolerant pastoralists.
Southern Europe wasn’t so thoroughly overrun by step invaders as Northern Europe was. Even today, there is a higher incidence of lactose intolerance in Southern Europe, but with less time for selection to have taken place, Mediterranean people were certainly less well adapted to eating dairy in antiquity. The survival issue with lactose intolerance historically, that doesn’t matter today, is not only did lactase make people feel ill, they could only utilize about half the calories in the dairy.
That Northern Europe was overrun by invaders from the steppe is well established by all lines of genetic evidence. The same people established themselves as ruling classes over much of Southern Europe as well. Lactase persistence in Europe is due to the derived T*13910 allele which is non-existent in non-steppe related European samples prior to the arrival of Yamnaya descended populations. The T*13910 allele frequency in Yamanya samples is 30%, which would have resulted in the lactase persistence phenotype in 51% of individuals (.3 + .3) - (.3 x .3) = .51. It was positively selected from there. The same allele occurs in Yamanya descended populations across the steppe and in South Asia.
What you've no doubt read about independent origin is true however. Most Afroasiatic speaking pastoralists have adult lactase persistence due to the C*14010 alelle and/or the G*13907 allele which arose independently.
Here are a couple of related papers:
The Beaker phenomenon and the genomic transformation of northwest EuropeAbstract: From around 2750 to 2500 BC, Bell Beaker pottery became widespread across western and central Europe, before it disappeared between 2200 and 1800 BC. The forces that propelled its expansion are a matter of long-standing debate, and there is support for both cultural diffusion and migration having a role in this process. Here we present genome-wide data from 400 Neolithic, Copper Age and Bronze Age Europeans, including 226 individuals associated with Beaker-complex artefacts. We detected limited genetic affinity between Beaker-complex-associated individuals from Iberia and central Europe, and thus exclude migration as an important mechanism of spread between these two regions. However, migration had a key role in the further dissemination of the Beaker complex. We document this phenomenon most clearly in Britain, where the spread of the Beaker complex introduced high levels of steppe-related ancestry and was associated with the replacement of approximately 90% of Britain’s gene pool within a few hundred years, continuing the east-to-west expansion that had brought steppe-related ancestry into central and northern Europe over the previous centuries.
Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in EuropeAbstract: We generated genome-wide data from 69 Europeans who lived between 8,000–3,000 years ago by enriching ancient DNA libraries for a target set of almost 400,000 polymorphisms. Enrichment of these positions decreases the sequencing required for genome-wide ancient DNA analysis by a median of around 250-fold, allowing us to study an order of magnitude more individuals than previous studies1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and to obtain new insights about the past. We show that the populations of Western and Far Eastern Europe followed opposite trajectories between 8,000–5,000 years ago. At the beginning of the Neolithic period in Europe, ∼8,000–7,000 years ago, closely related groups of early farmers appeared in Germany, Hungary and Spain, different from indigenous hunter-gatherers, whereas Russia was inhabited by a distinctive population of hunter-gatherers with high affinity to a ∼24,000-year-old Siberian6. By ∼6,000–5,000 years ago, farmers throughout much of Europe had more hunter-gatherer ancestry than their predecessors, but in Russia, the Yamnaya steppe herders of this time were descended not only from the preceding eastern European hunter-gatherers, but also from a population of Near Eastern ancestry. Western and Eastern Europe came into contact ∼4,500 years ago, as the Late Neolithic Corded Ware people from Germany traced ∼75% of their ancestry to the Yamnaya, documenting a massive migration into the heartland of Europe from its eastern periphery. This steppe ancestry persisted in all sampled central Europeans until at least ∼3,000 years ago, and is ubiquitous in present-day Europeans. These results provide support for a steppe origin9 of at least some of the Indo-European languages of Europe.