The Ancients - Origins of the Silk Road

Episode Date: May 4, 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. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code ANCIENTS - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. 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 in 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 origins of 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 me, Jana. Well, Jana, 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 pre-history 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. 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. This is really interesting to highlight straight away. It's not those great Bronze Age empires, whether it'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 Road. 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, 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 way, 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 tricky. Exactly. So it's between the steppes in Ukraine, or from the Pontic steppes, I would say, even all the way to Xinjiang. Then kind of the border to the south would be Tian Shan 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 step. It's just a misconception that it's just going to be just one straight meadow, eight 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 steppes. 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 transformed the bronze metallurgy. Once it reaches the knowledge of metal making, they have different way of thinking about what to make from metals. They made these large ding bronzes, they have objects which are like up to 10 tons and they all toss it in the funerals or funerary pits 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 the time. And we are 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 steppe some say roughly four thousand years ago what do we know about that that's a great question because when i 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 there 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 that's, I'm not saying they're all living the same lives, because looking at the steps 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'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 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 are 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.

and it's a small village just at the foothills of the Jungar 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 the 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 all these millions combined 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 you 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 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 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 to 100 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. Those were definitely seeds for the soul at that time. Seeds for the soul. I remember when popular media outlets announced this a few years ago, wasn't it? 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 the hominin species anyway, and so on. But yes, speaking archeological about this sound evidence of 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 millennium 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, seen 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, the 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 a 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 step now that i know you do so much work around and i have first of all in my notes we're kind of touching 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 kilde back in 2016 she wanted to have a term for these united shores of atlantic and pacific that you know cut also through Mediterranean and northern parts of Africa, where we see that all societies were trading and making bronzes, where 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 the Babylon Room. You're going to see the Royal Cemetery of Ur. They are loaded with bronzes. There are 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 have agricultural tools. But then in the second millennia BC, sadly to say, killing tools. We have a lot of arrowheads, axes. We also have these super fashionable types of metals called sematurbino, 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 like, you know, 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, 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 euros. It's like 10 times more. And it is estimated that should be like around a million metric tons in just Kazakhstan 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. 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 would 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. Do we know much about the smelting process itself? So, of course, you've extracted the oils. 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 like 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?

It's 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. 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 Taldisay

with this one recipe, one principle of smelting. And Taldisay 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 Jaskazgan and compare them with what we find in Taldisay

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. And you mentioned that they're using that one recipe. I mean, elsewhere in the steppe, do we know if different groups used 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 a large scale smelting I have to say that some of the sites actually only have traded items so in the site of I don't know bagash is just traded item they don't smelt in the site of dali they smell 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. 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, you know, the team content and whatever. But we have halberds, axes, spearheads, and this kind of 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 ask because of that, but also then as a side product, before we started recording, we were also kind of talking about something that you wanted to mention, which was almost the climate impact that this must have. So if you have all of these workshops working away, 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 kind of 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 the that sort of a you know presence of micro charcoal in the in the environment and then sampling around the furnaces any sort of a seeds

and phytoliths and micro charcoal and macro charcoal 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 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 these 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 establish. 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 the Bronze Age collapse that happens at the end of the second millennium BC in the Eastern world?

Yeah, it's a great topic. Yeah, I know. It's great questions. There is something happening around 1200 BC across the whole of Eurasia. I cannot say definitely if that 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, you know, 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 like just 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 more 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 steppe communities in central Eurasia also potentially played a role with it, with exhausting those resources for these metal production. I mean, it is so mind-blowing to think how important these communities are

in creating these metals that circulate across Eurasia. But 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, 3000 more analysis from other labs, you know,

combined, it's of artifacts and they're all from the steppes. That's like for the Bronze Age steppes. 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 an asian 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 industrially or something so yes in that sense but it is important to kind of think about what the chinese eat the societies at the time is that they reinvented the technology they 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 temples where you can just play the bells for a certain music or 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 metalwork 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 steppes, 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, it's kind of the bronze roads of some 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 over it. I'm not 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 mention 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, you would have these mighty societies of the Mediterranean and Shang Dynasty and the Indus Valley and Egypt and so on, and you have things in between. 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 initiative, with the Bronson 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 a railway, like with the new roads being built. I think it's kind of a pause at the time, not easy to just, you know, 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 you know once the maritime silk roads kicked in these terrestrial routes were forgotten historically but not really forgotten because they continue to leave but that just

less prominently 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 East and West and South and so on some 4,000 years ago. Now, it's not just metals that are spread, though, is it? What other items do these steppe peoples in Central Eurasia, 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. And 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 preparing food. That's one of the ways to think about this 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 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, koumiss 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 in Central Asia, 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 those big sedentary civilizations these step nomads in the step you know 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 like the creation of this or this first global network well they definitely were the glue to that if there was not demand they you know 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. And 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 horse, maybe you could do it in less.

But if you're a single horse person, just riding the horse, it would be two. And then you would just you know transfer whatever goodies you were you were carrying with you but that's it three weeks with two good horses. Miljana 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 There was Dr. Miljana Radovojevic 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 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.