Dan Snow's History Hit - Origins of the Silk Road

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

The Silk Road was a pivotal ancient exchange network that connected the grassy steppes of Asia and the Middle East with the Western world. The passage of goods, ideas and technologies along this bustling commercial artery was crucial to the development of the ancient East and West. It was, quite simply, the glue that held the ancient world together. But what were the origins of this first global exchange network? In today’s episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes seeks to answer that very question. Speaking to Dr. Miljana Radivojevic they discuss how people living in Bronze Age Central Asia helped build the world’s first and most famous trading route. This episode was produced by Joseph Knight and edited by Aidan Lonergan Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off for 3 months using code ‘DANSNOW’.We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. I've just returned from China where I visited the city of Xi'an. During the magnificent Tang Dynasty that ruled over China from 600-ish to 900-ish AD, Xi'an was the city of Chang'an, and it was the largest city in the world at the time. There were about a million people living there, it was diverse, it was an entrepot of different ideas and cultures and trade merchants flowing in because this was the terminus of the so-called Silk Road. It was to there that Chinese merchants gathered luxury goods like silk and tea, and from there that they were then exported on the long land route across Eurasia, ending up as far away as Western Europe. And this podcast, friends, is all about the Silk Road.

It's actually an episode of The Ancients, our sibling podcast, featuring none other than the Tristorian himself, Tristan Hughes. So this is the origins of the Silk Road, an episode of The Ancients with the Tristorian. Enjoy. The Great Step. Stretching from China to the Ukraine, this vast region of mountains, grasslands and rivers is often associated with nomadic civilisations of ancient history. Think the Huns, the Scythians and the Xiongnu, for instance. But that is oversimplifying their story.

Because more than 5,000 years ago, people living in Central Asia, places like Kazakhstan today, were central and connecting East with West. They were the glue which helped build the first global network back in the Bronze Age. We can call this the origin to the famous Silk Roads. However, silk was not the main commodity being exchanged at that time. It was metals. Living in lands rich in metal deposits, Central Asian communities became the suppliers of precious metals such as copper and tin

to great Bronze Age dynasties both in the East and in the West. They were also spreading technologies too, think chariots for instance. And so in this episode we'll be delving into the story of these ancient Central Asian communities, their connections and their metalworking, and even how this massive metalworking industry on the Great Step may well have led to environment destruction and climate change. That is all to come. Now our guest today is Dr. Miljana Radivojevic from University College London. Miljana is a leading expert on Bronze Age metallurgy in the Great Step and is also about to embark on a groundbreaking research project on this very topic in Central Asia.

So I was delighted to get the chance to interview her at London's Spotify studio all about these origins of the Silk Road before she left. I really do hope you enjoy. And here's Miljana. Miljana, it is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast today. I'm really honoured. And to do it in this amazing Spotify studio, to go to Central Asia and some 4,000 years ago, the origins of the Silk Road that we sometimes always think about in medieval times, arguably,

like it all begins this great global exchange network it begins back in prehistory in the bronze age totally it is the bronze age all the way through we have for the first time these communities exchanging knowledge and exchanging commodities from as early as 3500 BC, actually. So we have them being very mobile from early Bronze Age, so-called Yamnaya culture, though it's like a complex of cultures. And then we have towards the second millennium BC, the generation, if I may call it, of so-called Andronova cultural complex, which is a cultural complex of many communities

living between the Urals and the Altai Mountains, put it very roughly. And they are the ones who are actually trading and exchanging metals with all these big societies we hear about, the sedentary empires, the Shang Dynasty, the Indus Valley civilization, the Mesopotamia, Mediterranean and so on, Egypt, if you like. And they were, I wouldn't say single-handedly, but they were definitely

feeding the emerging political leadership at the time with a trade of metals, especially copper and tin. So this is really interesting to highlight straight away. It's not, I say, those great kind of Bronze Age empires, whether's the shang dynasty in china or egypt in the eastern mediterranean places like that it is these smaller communities these step communities in central eurasia that really they fuel the creation of this first global exchange network yes i mean i would argue that that network was possibly called the bronze road at the time but it's just one of those things every academic would like, you know, to make their own, whatever, coinage at the time. I'm quite happy to keep up with the Silk Roads.

As long as we are aware that we are not only talking about exchanging commodities, which is what Silk Road was mainly about, these connectivities across Eurasia, they were uniting Atlantic and Pacific for the first time ever in human history. And they were moving these fundamental technologies of making metals, also horse domestication, also inventing chariots. There's a lot of mobilities happening at the time. So it is not just the commodities.

It is basically life skills, if you like. And they were uniting the Atlantic and Pacific in the way that no one did that before, because we have for the first time bronze artefacts reaching both shores looking very similar. This is down to the Bronze Age pastoralist societies in the steppes. You mentioned chariots on going there, and we'll certainly revisit the word chariots and how that comes into this later on during the podcast episode. But a few big background questions, first of all, Miljana. And the first one is, actually, when we say the word Silk Road,

I mean, no such thing as a silly question. What do we mean when we say the word Silk Road or Silk Roads? Well, it's a term used to describe this trading of commodities starting from High Dynasty China, well into the Arabian Peninsula and further towards Europe. You have development of those routes well into Venice. We all heard about Marco Polo and so on. So it is a historical term. We can use it. It is good enough. But just so that we know that Silk Road is not just related to agrarian empires and sedentary societies and people trading and exchanging goods in big bazaars in ancient cities. The big game was happening

with the steppe nomads. And it is only our perception that we see societies that are well distinctively stratified to be civilized that we could not before comprehend that societies such as steppe nomads or steppe pastoralists would be a civilization or would be complex but they are complex but in a different, in a more sort of a horizontal, you know, stratification way, where they connect through different institutions of belief or institutions of trade and exchange, but they have a different way of living their lives, which doesn't mean that they are not civilized. And in that sense, I would like to clarify that Silk Road is a term that is all inclusive and all kinds of civilizations that we had at the time.

And we're going to be focusing in largely on these civilizations on the steppe and the Great Steppe. And also then, what do we mean? How big an area are we talking about when we mention the word steppe? Conventionally, 8 million square kilometers. Okay, yeah, quite big. Exactly. million square kilometers okay yeah exactly so it's between the steps in ukraine or from the pontic steps i would say even all the way to xinjiang then kind of a the border border to

the south would be you know tianshan mountains and to the north these tundras and tigers of Siberia. But that's kind of the inner Eurasia, if you like. And when we think about the steppes, we usually think about the grasses. While most of the steppes are grasses, it's got many ecotones. It's got forests, it's got mountains, it's got highlands and lowlands. So all of that is a steppe. It's just a misconception that it's just going to be just one straight meadow, 8 million square kilometers big. And also, when we're exploring the geography and the topography of this area,

as we're going to be talking about metals as this podcast goes on, how rich in metal deposits is this area of Eurasia? Well, it is very rich. But when we think about the ancient mines in the Bronze Age, and we have for comparison the ancient mining systems in the Bronze Age in Europe, and we compare to like one of the ancient mining systems in the steppes, which is Kargaly in South Russia, Kargaly is 10 times the production efficiency of the biggest mining system in Europe, which is in Mitterberg in Austria.

So that is one of like six, seven systems in the steps. So we are talking about millions and millions and millions of tons of metals being produced. And I'm not even touching on the subject of China because China is going to be a hundred times that, right? Because what we have in China they completely transform the bronze metallurgy once it reaches the knowledge of metal making they have different way of of thinking about what to make from metals they make these large ding bronzes they have objects which are like up to 10 tons and they all toss it in the in the funeral so like you know repeats and so on

it's a completely different story but I want to say that what is left over from the Shang dynasty is much more than what is left over in terms of metals from the steppes but speaking of these times when the metallurgy spreads it is massive production efficiency at a time and we are told we're also thinking that that sort of production scale might have impacted the carbon emission peaks that we see just around the beginning of the Bronze Age, based on the ice scoring from the North Pole. It is yet to be investigated, but it is very much correlated. Whether it's connected to each other is something to be seen, but it would be a no-brainer because

we cannot explain these peaks in carbon emission otherwise than those like 10-15 ppm that I've seen in the records but metal production. I certainly want to explore this in more depth, metal production by these people some 4,000 years ago and how big and important it was for the creation of this first global network as it were but I'd like to also ask a bit about the people themselves. What kind of lifestyle did they have, the people who lived in the steppes, say roughly 4,000 years ago? What do we know about that? That's a great question. Because when we think about all this connectedness, and we know that they were supplying all these metals and all the goodies to the sedentary and rich people in outer Eurasia. You would imagine they lived like a very cozy life.

There was a villa or something. They lived like in little huts, which were sort of a semi-dug-in, dirty, if you like, very simple pottery that I've seen. In terms of subsistence economy, they were herding goats, sheep and cattle, depending on where in the steppes you are. And they were pastoralist societies, which means that had these transhuman activities in their lifestyles, taking the livestock during the summers to the highlands, to graze, and then in the winter staying in the lowlands.

So I'm not saying they're all living the same lives, because looking at the steppes and the sites that we are working on, some of them are purely metallurgical. They could be seasonal, but they are just workshops. I don't even know where they slept. They possibly slept next to the furnace because I don't have any dwellings of these metallurgists. I only have like lots and lots of metallurgical workshops, like in the site of Taldisay in central Kazakhstan, for instance, that my student is working on right now. We the site of Taldisay in central Kazakhstan, for instance, that my student is working on right now.

We'll get to Taldisay in a bit, but you mentioned, I mean, the word nomadic comes up time and time again when we talk about the Great Steppe and we talk about prehistory, you know, you get later the Huns and then Genghis Khan and so on. Can we call these pastoralists who went from place to place, can we call them nomadic? Conditionally, it is easier to call them nomadic. But when we think about nomadic, we think about people with irregular movements. And these pastoralist movements are more regular. But speaking about the past, we are not always sure what was regular and what was irregular. So nomadic pastoralism should be okay, but it's just one of those things just to bear in mind that it's about the regularity of the movement.

And they're going from place to place and all across the steppe. And of course, does this in turn also kind of influence exchange and connections between these people and nearby more sedentary civilizations, let's say like the Shang Dynasty in China and places further west in Mesopotamia. Does this movement, does that help start to kind of influence and inspire these connections between these societies all across Eurasia? Yeah, they are the glue, definitely, of these early empires and states, because they're the ones with higher mobility connecting the dots, if you like.

I think this is the best way actually to explain in terms of networks. When we think about connectedness of the Silk Roads between these sedentary societies, we pay a lot of attention to the nodes, nodes being these cities, fortresses, and so on. While when we turn the story a little bit to the north and we think about connectedness in the steps, it is all about the edges. It's all about these roots of connectedness. I wouldn't think that they knew they were part of something

as big as the Silk Roads, right? But we see all sorts of materials ending in like little campsites from far away. The site I'm working on in the region of Semirecie with my colleague Michael Faschetti, it's called Begash. It's got metals coming from Northwest India. And it's a small village just at the foothills of the Djungar Mountains. So, you know, in what world would a goat herder from like Jungar Mountains access the whatever metals from Northwest India? It just tells you about these

small scale connectedness, these small scale networks that basically are millions, there are millions and millions of those, but in a kind of a from looking from outer space, they look like a Silk Road, but they're just like as dense as any other connectedness you can imagine between different people societies you know regions and so on how these millions combine together it's absolutely fascinating well you mentioned the name big ash there and i kind of like to use that and other sites that we worked on too as we kind of explain like the origins of the silk road i mean what's some of our earliest evidence for like trade and exchange across Eurasia what do we know? Well officially if I may put it that way

we would think of that as a sort of evidence that comes from the east and evidence that comes from the west kind of coming you know to one site and we have the site of Begash, where in the burial they found seeds of millet, wheat, and barley. Millet is known to come from China, barley and wheat from Southwest Asia. So that's like a contact 4,500 years ago. But then we have something earlier from Tongtian Cave in Northwest India, which is 5,200 years ago, I think. Same sort of a thing.

But that was a bouquet. It wasn't just that they were throwing millet and wheat just around the site, it was deposited in the burial. So just thinking about the concept of my colleague called seeds for the soul, those were definitely seeds for the soul at that time. Seeds for the soul. And I remember when popular media outlets when this was kind of this a few years ago, the discovery of these grains. It wasn't the Silk Road, this was the Grain Road at the time. That's extraordinary that these were some of the earliest commodities

that we have evidence for being exchanged over these huge distances through these steppe societies. Yes, but there were lots of connectedness happening in the Paleolithic times. And we know about the movement of, you know, of the hominid species anyways and so on. But yes, speaking archaeological about this sound evidence of like the contact from the East and the West, the grains would be an interesting bet. But also we know that these technologies move along the, especially along the inner Asian mountain corridors. We know that, you know, people move along those corridors. There's massive DNA studies, ancient DNA studies done recently to show the mobility of this Yamnaya culture from, you know, around the southern Urals, Caucasus, that sort of a,

you know, Pontic steppe region towards the east and the west. But we also have these movements later in the second annual BC along the inner Asia mountain corridors into India and so on. So like interesting topics to dwell on. And I know there's a lot of research coming soon to clarify what these movements mean. And the project that I'm just going to do for the next five years is going to be mostly about what did it mean, all these movements, all these migrations,

what kind of changes we could see happening in those societies, in the settlements that we are investigating, seeing through the technology. And why technology is because technology is an extended phenotype of human behavior. So whatever they were doing, wherever they were going, inspiration they were getting, I can see that in technology. And we have a massive, like abundant material,

hundreds of thousands of kilograms of slugs and, you know, remains of furnaces and pair that with like thousands of artifacts and so on. So it's a lot to do, but it is exciting just knowing how amazing these societies were. Well, let's explore this kind of metalworking in the steppe now that I know you do so much work around. And I have first of all in my notes, we kind of touched on it already, but explain what this is. The word bronzization, bronzization, that seems to grip the whole of Eurasia some 4,000 years ago. Now, what is this? It's a beautiful concept coined by my dear colleague Helen Van Kilder back in 2016.

She wanted to have a term for these united shores of Atlantic and Pacific that cut also through Mediterranean and northern parts of Africa, where we see that all societies were trading and making bronzes. The main difference between north and the south of these societies, I think north being inner Eurasia and south being outer Eurasia, is that the inner Eurasian societies were producing metal and trading, while the outer Eurasian societies were using mostly. Think of Mesopotamia. Go to the British Museum and Babylon Room. You're going to see the Royal Cemetery of Ur. They are loaded with bronzes. There's no tin resources in

Mesopotamia. The tin is reaching them through Afghanistan. That is through the Inner Asia Mountain Corridor. And we know isotopically that a lot of tin is coming from Central Asia into these societies. And recently there was a paper claiming that even the Uluburun shipwreck, some of the metals came from that region. So we're talking about really massive expansion of the trade and exchange networks from peasants living in small huts in the steppes. And what sorts of metals are these? You mentioned tin there, but what are the main metals that we can see from the archaeological research so far that these steppe peasants are extracting from these mines in Eurasia in the steppe?

Prior to 2nd millennium BC, we have agricultural tools. But then in the 2nd millennium BC, sadly to say, there are killing tools. We have a lot of arrowheads, axes. We also have these super fashionable types of metals called sematurbina, which come especially from the Altai Mountains. It's like the Burberry of the metals or like the Tesla of the metals. So they are having a particular proportion of tin to copper. It is 10% tin, 90% copper, but they have these beautifully cast handles with mythical creatures of lions and panthers and warriors and so on. And these knives, which were beautifully crafted, are only worn by the warriors. We find them in burials across the steppe from Altai into the Urals, into the Caucasus.

So it's like a fashion or like an exceptional craftsmanship at the time that we have. So we have tools for conquering other societies. And they're always themselves. So you've got tin and I guess there's some massive copper mines as well. And I just kind of want to get into the everyday logistics of these people as they are extracting these resources how should we envisage one of these mines in central asia because you mentioned right at the start though these are massive industries that emerge in central asia at this time but how massive should we be thinking so let's say if the production capacity of the Bronze Age mine in Europe was 15,000 metric

tons during this bronzization period, I should have mentioned is between 1600 and 1200 BC, this 400 years. Within the same kind of a boom phase, we have 150,000 metric tons of copper from Urals. There's like 10 times more. And it is estimated that should be like around a million metric tons in the Jaskazgan region, which is in central Kazakhstan. So the way they looked from what we know from Kargalí is that there are 35,000 shafts, 500 square kilometers of the whole region. square kilometers of the whole region. There are around 30 different sites. And these sites are mostly metallurgical sites. So those are specialist communities who are only smelting and making

metal. And we have them obviously trading metal for cattle. So they don't keep the cattle, but they eat the cattle, right? They eat the meat. And we see a lot of bones present on the sides, but no signs of herding livestock. So in that sense, that's how I would imagine them. Maybe they were doing it seasonally, that they will be gathering and doing like six months per year, just melting metal and exchanging for some other goods. Though some of them could have been permanent. I'm yet to investigate that part. I'm Matt Lewis.

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Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to gone medieval from history hit wherever you get your podcasts do we know much about the smelting process itself so of course you've attracted the ores i mean were there kind of these industries these workshops almost nearby and we know much about the smelting process itself? So, of course, you've extracted the ores. I mean, were there kind of these industries, these workshops almost nearby?

And do we know about the process, about how they kind of made it from the raw material into, let's say, a tin bronze object or a copper object, something like that? Yeah, that's a great question. We know that now from the excavations of Taldisai and the research going on with my PhD student, Ilaria Calgaro, what we learn is that they have these innovative furnaces, completely unseen before, like deep-shut furnaces with some long channels that are then fired from the other end. And I think they're using the differential pressure

where they kind of fire the channel, the hot air enters to the channel into the furnace, and then they fire the furnace, and then some of the to the channel into the furnace and then they fire the furnace and then some of the fumes can kind of go the other way. Why is it important is because they are smelting the sulfur rich copper ores and they don't want to inhale the sulfur. So we assume that the sulfur was actually in that way taken out from the kind of space where they were smelting. actually in that way taken out from the kind of space where they were smelting. And given the size of these deep shut furnaces, they could produce anything in the range from like 600, 700 to 800 kilograms of metal in one go.

So that's massive. And we see them doing that for at least 400 years continuously in the site of Tal Disai with this one recipe, one principle of smelting. And Taldisayi is just one of many sites in the region of central Kazakhstan, in the Jaskazgan region that we see existing at the time. I need to say that Jaskazgan is currently a modern mining region. So we wouldn't have any ancient traces of mining because they would have been destroyed by now. But we can use provenance analysis, say, take the copper ores from Jessica's garden and compare them with what we find in Tal Disai and make a clear connection,

which there is a clear connection. We know that. It's amazing to see that those remains of those workshops and 4,000 years later to deduce this. You mentioned that they're using that one recipe. Elsewhere in the steppeppe do we know if different groups used like almost different recipes to produce their own types of metals yes but a little bit earlier we have using different types of ores i mean it depends on where we are talking about like in the middle bronze age these furnaces were a little bit smaller but they still had this deep shaft in the late bronze age they become this kind of a more adapted for large-scale smelting.

I have to say that some of the sites actually only have traded items. So in the site of Begash, it's just a traded item, they don't smelt. In the site of Dali, they smelt but like in the backyard, right? It's not like a large scale. So I don't expect for everyone to be doing metallurgy, but I can see that there is a good specialization that, you know, some of them living closer to the mines will be specializing and will be kind of scaling up their activities in such a way. While the others will be, well, really just keeping goats and sheep.

And then, you know, the exchange will be happening between them. But there is not one answer and there is not one story about them. But what I can tell you is that that sort of a scale, the innovative approaches to furnace building, the production capacity and the efficiency that we see at the time is really unparalleled. And then we have China, which is not even part of this story, which takes everything to a completely

different level. It's such high-level technological knowledge by these step nomads, almost, if we can use that term. And it's absolutely fascinating to think about how I'm exaggerating a bit, but it almost feels like a Bronze Age industrial revolution in that area of the world and how big an industry it becomes. in that area of the world and how big an industry it becomes. We have that there, and we have these created products, whether it's tin, whether it's copper, whether it's tin bronze.

What types of artefacts created in this area of the world become incredibly popular with those Bronze Age sedentary civilisations that we so often think of, such as those in Mesopotamia, in Egypt, or in Shang Dynasty? Are there any particular metals produced in Central Asia that are really sought after? I would say when it comes to the trade with the South, that they could have been raw materials then to be cast for their own needs. But when it comes to more kind of a horizontal trade and exchange, these very distinctive spearheads could have been popular because of their dynamics or because of the team content and whatever. But we have halberds, axes, spearheads,

and this kind of a horizontal line of exchange. But for everything else, I think it was down to the preferences of those who were purchasing the metals. I mean, they could easily just recast in their own right and produce whatever they wanted. But it's usually axes and chisels and all that sort of insignia, if you like, of power at the time, but also using for practical purposes. The reason I ask is if it seems like it's such a massive industry

in the Bronze Age central step at that time, and obviously there seems to be this high demand for it. I mean, I asked because of that, but also then as a side product, before we started recording, we were also kind of talking about something you wanted to mention, which was almost the climate impact that this must have. So if you have all of these workshops, working your way, creating these materials, and then of course, you're exchanging raw materials too. But what do we know about that and how this affects the climate almost some 4,000 years ago? That's another 2 million euros question. I'm quite happy I've been granted enough funds to explore that a little bit more in detail. But what I can tell you is that judging by what we know

thus far, there are many ways in which carbon enters the environment and the atmosphere, something from the soil, from the sea and so on. But there is an unaccounted quantity of carbon, I think I mentioned 10 to 15 ppm, that we find in ice cores that we don't know where it comes from. My best bet is that it comes from metal production. But we are to explore that by getting the pollen cores from the lakes nearby the big mining centers and then exploring and counting for the micro charcoal. So looking at that sort of presence of microcharcoal in the environment and then sampling around the furnaces any sort of seeds and phytoliths and microcharcoal and macrocharcoal and whatever we can find to look at the species and then try to reconstruct the environment and then use different sorts of evidence to see how much of deforestation was actually taking place because mind you if we are talking about millions of tons of copper produced at the time and definitely tin though we have less evidence for tin i have to say

we need fuel for that so the amount of fuel needed for that sort of production does not match what we see in terms of the environment in the steppes. It's mostly grasslands, right? But where is the forest that they used? So the idea is, and it's not my idea, it's by this really prominent scholar who worked in Kargali, Evgeny Chernik, that these societies must have collapsed and they do collapse by the end of the second millennium BC because they exhausted all resources for fuels, right?

So the one thing could be, one option is that they maybe imported fuels, which is less likely, but who knows? But then another option is that they combined whatever wood they could find with dung. Dung is even now used in Mongolia or in Kazakhstan for cooking temperatures, right? To cook as a fuel, but like you wouldn't have dung as a sole fuel to maintain the temperatures in excess of 1,100 degrees, which is why we need both. So there is a way scientifically to show that by looking at the types of phytoliths that we find around the furnaces, which is what we are going to do in this next five years.

But it is an interesting hypothesis to see whether they really were so reckless at the time that they just completely destroyed the environment to the point where they couldn't just survive with that sort of a branch of subsistence economy that they established. It was an economy that was keeping them alive in different ways. Because you mentioned the word collapse there, so could this hypothesis then potentially be linked to this so-called Bronze Age collapse that happens at the end of the second millennium BC in the Eastern world? Yeah, it's a great topic. Great questions. There is something happening around 1200 BC across the whole of Eurasia, I cannot say definitely if there was just one reason, right? Climate could have somehow impacted some parts of the world because we have kind of the increased

aridity in the steppes. And then we have a different life ways emerging by the end of the Bronze Age, early Iron Age. We have Scythian tribes coming to the fore of historical evidence. But when it comes to the other places, I have to say in Europe, there are combinations of factors. It's like different societies collapsing for different reasons. And I'll just say, if you're interested in the topic, just keep your eyes open on this space. I have to say, you put me on the spot because there's not a simple answer.

Fair enough. It is always more complicated, those things. I remember talking to Eric Klein recently about it as well, and he highlighted all those different factors. But it's interesting to kind of suggest that perhaps these step communities in Central Asia also potentially played a role with it, with kind of exhausting those resources for these metal production. It is so mind-blowing to think how important these communities are in creating these metals that circulate across Eurasia. Of course, you also mentioned earlier how in China, things are taken almost to another level. Should we also imagine these groups of steppe communities, these steppe nomads in the second millennium BC, they are spreading metals like tin bronze and copper alloys and so on.

Do we see evidence that they are importing, let's say, metals like bronze from what is today Europe and also kind of then seeing those exchange and go further east and then vice versa? Do we also see them very much as ferrying metals across the whole Eurasian continent too? Like a proper merchant. Judging by the analysis, what we do, we do trace element analysis and different sorts of providence analysis.

And we have around, say, combined 120,000 analysis from Moscow solely, 3,000 more analysis from other labs combined, it's of artifacts and they're all from the steppes. That's like for the Bronze Age steppes. I wouldn't dismiss the possibility of any metals coming from Europe to China via the steppes, but there's nothing alike in the analysis. If anything, we can see that in the Asia Mountain Corridor, where we have also lots of tin resources, play this role of metal coming from the south or like raw metal coming from the south into the steppes, but South Central Asia into Central Asia.

I'm not thinking like into Australia or something. So yes, in that sense, but it is important to kind of think about what the Chinese, the societies at the time, is that they reinvented the technology. They did it completely their own way. And what they make first, bells. They use metal for harmonics, for frequency, for tonality, for entering the tempos where you can just play the bells for a certain music, whatever. It's a completely different way of perceiving metallurgy, which is why I'm so impressed by what the Chinese societies do at the time.

And there was the old debate where because of this really impressive metal work we see in the Bronze Age China, that Chinese metallurgy is independent or was independent. But it has been shown that the technology and the ideas and the knowledge comes from the steps, comes from the pastoral societies, but they get transformed by the Chinese Bronze Age society in terms of what they make and how they perceive and the symbolism and so on. But again, it's a completely different topic, not so in the focus right now, but to know that

the steppe nomads had a crucial role in bringing that into China is important to spell out. Very important too, and especially as we kind of highlight, as you mentioned, the Bronze Roads some 4,000 years ago. Before we started talking, we also mentioned these words, 4,000 years ago. Before we started talking, we also mentioned these words, the great game and the Bronze Age great game. Now, can you please explain what we mean by that and what you mean by that when we kind of use this language to kind of explain what this, almost like the origins of the first global exchange network was? I use that as a sort of a, you know, play of words. I'm not a a historian but i'm aware very well of the great game so-called historically played between the british empire and the russian empire

back in the 1980s 19th century so we have these famous images of the lion and the bear but why i mentioned that is because also the Central Asian communities were very important in all these diplomatic struggles between the two empires. And I could see that sort of being transferred back in time into the Bronze Age. Whatever was happening, there were lots of tensions between different empires. If you think that on one end at some point, different empires, if you think that on one end at some point, you know, you would have these mighty societies of the Mediterranean and Shang Dynasty and the Indus Valley and you know, Egypt and so on, and you have things in between. And in some way these Silk Roads, we can just call them just broadly Silk Roads as a way

of connectedness throughout Eurasia, are being kind of reclaimed with this new Silk Roads as a way of connectedness throughout Eurasia are being kind of reclaimed with this new Silk Roads initiative, with the Bronson and Road, Belt and Road initiative, yes, where all these routes of trade and exchange and even cutting through the sites of the Bronze Age communities kind of are being reclaimed with the railway, like with the new roads being built. I think it's kind of a pause at the time, not easy to just enter some spaces given the current political situation, but the idea is there. It is to connect the East and the West through the steps, kind of through the forgotten routes. Because once the maritime Silk Roads kicked in, these terrestrial routes were forgotten historically, but not really

forgotten because they continue to live, but they're just less prominent in historical records. We are very near the end, but we have kind of focused on this exchange and spreading of metals through these societies to the east and west and south and so on some 4,000 years ago. Now, it's not just metals that are spread there, is it? What other items do these steppe peoples in Central Asia, do they help spread across the continents? I think about food all the time. It is one of the ways, it's just different recipes, and those are the food ways. The seeds of the fruits that we use today are actually coming from Central Asia. There were projects by other colleagues also who worked on these food ways and food globalization that actually happens at the same time as this bronzization around the 1600 BC.

So we have many globalization projects happening across the steppes. One of the ways is definitely the food. So it's the seeds, but it's also the cooking practices. So they kind of, you know, keep moving back and forth and you see the slow penetration both ways, you know, while, you know, some are roasting, the other one are cooking or boiling and, you know, different ways of kind of preparing food. That's one of the ways to think about this bronzization time. Also chariots.

One of the ways to think about this is bronzization time. Also, chariots. We have them being invented, I mean, invented, yes, in central Kazakhstan, especially because we have domestication of horses just around the... I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history.

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By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. Analytic times in Botai, but also there are other places in northern Kazakhstan where we see remains of horses. So horse domestication is a big invention, if you like, of the steppe pastoral societies and therefore the chariots. We see the ways the chariots looked like we see in Anyang in the Shang Dynasty capital, late Shang Dynasty capital. They were burying horses and chariots together with the nobilities there and it's a similar practice to what we see in, say, Sintashta culture in the Urals around the Middle Bronze Age. There are also inventions, if I may call them, going back to the food, such as kefir made of mare milk.

Kumis, it's called. It's still a favorite drink of the people of Central Eurasia. Felt is a really interesting commodity in terms that you can't always see it being traded because it's organic materials, but there's a big trade in felt and felt makes a huge part of the clothing, traditional clothing industry. Even now in nomadic societies, there are still nomads in Kazakhstan, less so, But Central Asia, I felt, is a big thing for dressing and making dowry, if you like, and so on. It just blows me away. I mean, you mentioned chariots and so on, so many others just then, but it blows me away.

When we think of Bronze Age, we think of those big civilizations that we mentioned before, like New Kingdom Egypt or Babylon Mesopotamia or the Shang Dynasty in China or Harappa Indus Valley in the Indian subcontinent. But it has been so eye-opening to realize that this area where we don't have these big sedentary civilizations, these steppe nomads in the steppe, how important and how vital they are in spreading technologies, but also these metals. And can we say that they are the ones who build the creation of this first global network? Well, they definitely were the glue to that. If there was not demand, they would not have done it, right?

So it all comes together very nicely. But I do want to give them credit for moving fundamental technologies, if you want to call them life skills, from west to east and back. And that's something that completely transformed societies along the way, and they are the ones who did it. This is how it entered China. This is how we learn about the glory of the Bronze Age civilizations in China and so on. We see that all reflected in this novel political leadership with Harappa,

with Babylon, with Egypt and so on. They are the glue. They are the glue and they are moving technologies in the fastest way possible in that time. Over huge, you know, miles and miles, hundreds of thousands of miles of territory as well. It's absolutely astonishing, those distances. It is, but I think someone tested it. You would need three weeks and two horses to ride from one end to the other of the steps.

Maybe if you have another course, maybe you could do it in less. But if you're a single horse person, just riding the horse, it will be two. And then you would just, you know, transfer whatever goodies you were carrying with you. But that's it, three weeks with two good horses. Marliana, this has been absolutely great. So it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today thank you for being such a great host well there you go there was dr miljana radvoyevich talking all things the origins of the silk road these bronze age pastoral communities in central asia that were the glue in creating this first global network the spread of precious metals of of copper, of tin, of bronze.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode and found it enlightening. We shouldn't always be thinking of those great Bronze Age empires, whether it's New Kingdom Egypt or Mesopotamia or one of the dynasties like the Shang Dynasty in China, for instance. We mustn't forget these incredibly important communities that roamed the Great Steppe in central asia last thing from me wherever you're listening to the podcast make sure that you are subscribed that you are following the ancients so that you don't miss out when we release new episodes twice every week but that's enough from me and i will see you in the next episode Thank you. you