The Romans and China

in prehistoric island, or what made Alexander truly great.

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leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe. Hello, I hope you're doing well.

I'm recording this from my car because I've just finished doing an interview with an absolute legend, a legend in the field of archaeology and quite frankly a British treasure today.

He's none other than Barry Cummler, sir Barry Cummler, who's been involved in archaeological

excavations since the 1950s. As in his 80s now, but he's still going strong, he's still as lovely as ever and is brilliant as ever.

“I've been up at his house doing this interview all about his new book, which explores”

the maritime connections, the maritime trading world of ancient history in the Indian ocean and beyond the ships carried by the monsoons. We recreate, in this episode, a theoretical journey of Roman goods from Roman Egypt and the Red Sea all the way to China. This was so much fun, Barry is as brilliant as ever, send love to Barry in the comments

okay, because as mentioned, he's an absolute treasure and I really do hope you enjoy this episode. Let's go. 2000 years ago, and Sri Lanka, this beautiful island in the Indian Ocean, is one of the great pivots of the world.

“Here, the Indian Ocean does not divide the world, it's tethers it, through bustling”

ports that can be found scattered along this island's coastline. To the Roman merchants who've survived the grueling journey here from the Red Sea, this is Taprabana, the renowned trading land near the edge of their known world. To the sailors arriving from the Han Empire in the east, this is a land renowned for its precious stones, its gems.

But for those who live on these docks, it is simply the point where the world meets. The waters are thick with the multi-mastered ships of Indian mariners, they are the master navigators of the monsoon, the men whose sturdy vessels and deep knowledge of the currents turn a treacherous ocean into a viable highway. Without their expertise and their fleets, this ancient link between the Mediterranean and

the South China Sea would simply cease to exist. On these keys, Roman silver denari are traded for bundles of raw silk, the black pepper of the Malabar coast is waired against the cinnamon stripped from these very hills, traders going back east to China are loading up their ships with Roman glass. For centuries, this island will stand at the centre of a great maritime highway, a

vital link in the chain that bound the Roman Red Sea to the gates of Han China. Two empires, thousands of miles apart, fascinated by each other and their goods, connected via sea by the great ports and sailors of the Indian ocean of Sri Lanka and beyond. It is a journey and a world we are going to explore today, with our special guest, Dr. Barry Company. Barry, it is such a pleasure to be back here and have you back on the podcast.

It's a great pleasure for me as well. There's nothing I like more than talking about the subjects I've been writing about. I have nothing I like more than it. Having you on as well to do it and we've been doing this for a few years now, haven't we done? We've done Brittany, the Sahara and now we're covering this amazing story of these extensive sea and ocean trade routes that they were

2,000 years ago. That did link the Mediterranean to China.

Yes, the world has always been connected and it's connected either by people going across

deserts like the Sahara or going along the step. A wonderful east-west route from China to Europe along the step or this sort of, what I call the underbelly of your Asia route through the oceans, through the Indian ocean and the China seas. But always the world has been linked and humans have been mobile and have always wanted to explore. This idea of acquiring

metal that they put on their hands and hang around their necks and goals. That's okay, yes.

Or coloured stones, literary stones, they want to acquire things that show off. But they also

“want to acquire knowledge. And I think what we're talking about today is both the acquiring”

of commodities, but it's also, I hope people wanted to share knowledge and find out about distant places and should bring that home and show off their travel experiences and so on. Well, this feels like an important point to address straightaway, question to address. So did the Romans say Imperial Romans are the early centuries AD and Imperial China at the same time? Did they know of each other? Oh, they certainly knew of each other. And they knew of each other

first of all, through the Socrates, the roads that joined China and the West, north of the Himalayan

mountains, these roads we call the Silk Roads, but also the commodities passed along them. These are through the stands today. That's right, starting from Western China, going through the

“Tachlamaka or Rang, Tachlamaka and desert, and into Uzbekistan and then further and further and”

till the hitting Europe. And commodities passed. Silk was moving from China into Europe, even even before the Romans. So the Romans would have had some idea of what was out there. And similarly, the Chinese were very interested in what was happening in the far west. And there was one chap called Ganyang, obviously, our Chinese, in 97 AD. Right. The Chinese were the hand in a state now occupied the whole of China and they had moved into the Tachlamaka desert area.

And they were looking west and they got Ganyang and they told him to go and find out about the west. And he went, as far as we can see, he went through the Silk Roads and then done the Indus valley to the mouth of the Indus, then caught a boat from there and went up the Arabian Gulf to the Khahi, now in southern Iraq. So that would be in the pathion empire, as it involves. And he was collecting information for the hand emperor. And the hand emperor wanted to know

all about the west. And when he got to the mouth of the tyrosine Euphrates, he met a load of sailors. And they said, well, you don't want to go there. You know, it's all, don't go there. Take your free years, you know, you'll be scared to death and everything. So he decided to stay where he was collecting information. And he got a file of information about the west. And went back home. So he was the Chinese would deliberately attempting to find out about the west.

Now that's the famous stories until we hear once in a while about how, you know, the Chinese they look west and then they get to the pathions and the pathions kind of push them off, coming any further, that's our idea, which is so interesting. That's like, well, the pathions, sort of, if we're talking about the Roman Empire and the Hannon in China, the pathions sat in between, covering Persia essentially, the whole of Persia. It was they who commanded the Silk roots.

And they commanded the price of silk. And the Romans wanted silk desperate. And silk was passing. But they didn't want the Chinese to find another way around to the Romans to have an earth. We've got that wonderful quote of the Vemplini about silk, talking about the huge amount of Roman money that's being spent and he says, the words here, India, China, and the Arabian

peninsula take 100 million cestersues from our empire every year at a conservative estimate.

“That's what our luxuries and our within costs. And then he goes on to say, you know, getting silk”

comes from very laborious to make and it comes from very far away, so distant to reach and look at the globe and drawn upon to enable the Roman matron to flaunt transparent Raymond's in public. So he's a grumpy old man saying, you know, the silk is costing as a huge amount and he's really not very good for the morale of the Romans. So in that regard, we know that these Chinese kids are reaching the Roman Empire. But if they're not all coming over land,

then via the Parthians, is it then the case, I remember talking to William Dau Rinpoche about this, that like Chinese silk and so much more is coming through the ports of places like India. It's been ferried from China to India and then Roman traders take it on from there into their empire. Yes, I think that's right. The main silk route is that Northern step route are the silk roads route,

it was going down the ganges in fact and it was going down the endless and being picked up

that there is places along the ocean as well. Do we also, you mentioned plenty there, but also this Chinese writer as well. So for learning more about their trade routes and maybe where they intertwined where he's intertwined with West, in regards to these maritime

“traders, can we reconstruct a potential voyage through sources from both cultures like it?”

We can, but we've got to be very careful, I think, because from our Western oriented point of view and Roman centered point of view, which a lot of people hold, they see the Romans as being the entrepreneurs getting on their boats and going across and trying to get to China and

so on. But remember there were a lot of very, very well-trained sailors with thousands of years

of experience in the Bay of Bengal, in the Arabian sea, in India itself, making these journeys daily and so there was a whole network of maritime connection and what Rome did was to check into it and make use of it and sometimes wander along the routes themselves. And we get a wonderful description in a hand history. It's called the Han Han Shu, the history of the later hand period. So a Chinese document, it says in a particular year the Yanxi year in the reign of Vibuan,

so you can work out that's 166 AD, and then they say that Da Chin, which is the Roman Emperor, and they name him Andon, and now we know that he must be Marcus, a religious of course, sent invoids to China. So sent invoids to China, they end up bringing gifts of an ivory and rhino horn and turtle shell. But then the source says, but nothing of a precious nature. So they're saying that he's a tattoo, they don't even have praise with it. They don't see

pleased with it. They don't seem pleased with the gifts they've received. That's right. The gifts are

“not the sort of thing. Ambassador would bring to the Chinese Emperor. You've got to remember that”

the Chinese Emperor's thought themselves to be absolutely at the centre of the world, and all the rest of the world was subservient to them. And what they wanted to do was to show all these different people in the world were bringing gifts and bowing down in front of the emperor. And the more people you could get to do that, ambassadors to come in, the more your own people saw you as a really important emperor. So the Chinese were keen to get these ambassadors coming in,

and fascinated by this reference to what they were bringing. Because what they were bringing is Rhino Hall Ivory, Turtle Shell. They could have picked up in a market on East Africa and just sailed across with it, you know, any old tattoo, a local market. And what I wonder is whether they asked themselves off as ambassadors, but that really they were just Roman traders, are trying to open up a market, and they didn't bring the right gifts for the emperor.

So that is the only actual case where we've got the text saying the Romans actually came to China, which is very interesting because we're going to delve into the various ports along route, where we know that Romans were. And then when the evidence gets fuzzy from the Romans side and you go the other way and you start figuring out who are the people, who are the sailors who are reaching finally, you know, past them they lay the malacastrate in the Malay Peninsula and up into China. But it seems

that although maybe the case of actual Romans reaching China is more dubious, there is evidence of Roman goods, ultimately reaching far East Asia. Or absolutely, one of the products that they

really loved in the East was Roman glass, glass made, well, Syria was probably the most important

centre of glass making in the Roman period, and we get Roman glass ending up in Korea and in Japan. Wow, this is Japan, this was Japan. But how that glass got there, and who were the carriers, is another thing. We mustn't think of a load of Romans loaded up with, you know, rucksacks full of glass, getting there around houses. We've got a load of stuff made in China, but it's not a Chinese trader who brings it here comes through middlemen, middlemen, middlemen.

“And I think that's how much of the Roman material got to the East, but it certainly did.”

There's a lot of Roman glass, particularly in the burials in Korea, in the 4th century AD, and that's the high period of it. But one suspects that most of that went by the Silk Runes,

there are Roman items, one finds all the way along that maritime route. Well, let's start tracing

“that now, Barry, and I think we're going to take ourselves to the early 3rd century AD. So a time”

when the Roman Empire, I say before the 3rd century crisis, so to me is several than likes, the Roman Empire is at his height, and also in China, you have the final years of the hand dynasty as well. So before these crises periods, so they're both at that height, we're going to imagine that we're a trader sailing with, well, let's say items like Roman glass from the West,

from what is today Egypt and the Red Sea, and get all the way to China. First and foremost,

those waterways at that time, Barry. First millennium AD, from the Red Sea, past Arabia, past the Indian subcontinent Southeast Asia to China, just how busy were they at that time.

“I think they were extremely busy, not just with Roman trade, but they were so interlinked”

by generations after generation after generation of maritime connection. OCs were alive with people, and when we get little hints of what was going on in the port, from various texts, they were really busy places, and they were visited by sailors from all over the place.

And that's the interesting thing. Most many of the ports, along the way,

your Roman would have met up with people from Arabia, people from India, people from the Malay region. These ports were really cosmopolitan. It really starts, I think, with the tolamids. We've just got to go back a little bit before our preferred date. The tolamids, death, death of Alexander the Great. So three to three, break up for Alexander's empire, each it comes under one of one of the old commanders of his generals, tolamic and tolamic. And the tolamids begin. But what

Alexander does is to create Alexandria, the port and Mediterranean port of Egypt. And the tolamids, then have the Mediterranean port in their country. They also have the Red Sea port in their country. So they are sitting on this interface between the Roman world, as it were, the Mediterranean world, what becomes the Roman world, the Mediterranean, and the Red Sea, which provides the link into these great seaways, shipping lanes to China. And we find that the tolamids sort of

developing these, this won't down the Red Sea and building ports on the Red Sea, on the African coast of the Red Sea, so that their ships can get down. By 118 BC, they are trading down to the southern end of the Red Sea. And then there's a guy called Yodoxus, a sailor and entrepreneur and explorer. And one of the tolamids has him to take an Indian who has been shipwrecked in the Red Sea. So that tells us there were Indian sailors coming into the Red Sea at that stage.

So Yodoxus takes this Indian and says, you know, show me the way to India. And he makes a trip across to India. And that is the first information we've thought about opening up that route

to India from what is to become the Roman world. And then in this amazing document, the Paratlus

there are three on sea, which is a most fascinating account. It's really a text for sailors who are making sea journeys from the Red Sea across to India. And it's written in very basic Greek, so anyone can read it. And it gives all the details any sailor would want about all the ports that you visit, how to get there, what the hazards are, what goods are on sail. It's a text book for a trader. Information, yes, exactly. It's just text. Just information. And it was put together

sometime in middle of the first century BC. So after Yodoxus, one of the things it says, it mentions a man called Ifolus. It's also a wind called Ifolus, as well. So it's a problem here. But he was the

“fast person we're told in the Paratlus to sail on the monsoon winds. This is a very important”

development, because getting from the mouth of the Red Sea, you'd come through the Straits into the Gulf of Eden and the two meat at about right angles. And the Gulf of Eden gives out

sail up the coast and around the northern end of the, what is called the Arabian sea, but the northern

end of the Indian Ocean down to the coast of India. Now what Ifolus does is to show how you can sail on the monsoon winds. He develops these different routes that you can take. One along the coast, one cutting across the northern India, and one using the monsoon properly to go right across Straty from west to east and hit southern India to open ocean. Oh, crossing the open ocean. Yeah, what is there in the between there? There are a few small islands in between, but a bit off

and that. You've arched. Nothing much at all. Pliny writes about this later, says that going from

one of the Red Sea ports across to southern India, who's serious in southern India, it would take

“you 40 days. And he says, but remember to take archers. Come on. Because when you get to the Indian”

coast, they're a little piracy. So if we now go to the time of the Romans and Egypt, so postal gustors and sneak clear capture, they're long gone. Egypt has part of the Roman Empire. They've taken advantage of these ports already created by the Tolamys and then they take it to the next level with this trade. But let's say then we are a trader in the Roman Empire. But let's say we start at Alexandria. We've got our glass, beautiful glass from Alexandria, and we're going to take

it east, of course, also wanting to get some goods back from India. But how do we go from Alexandria to these ports on the Red Sea where we begin our naval voyage? Alexander is beautifully cited, of course, on the sea, and on one of the branches of the the Nile. So offload the Daleks

“Andres, a girl crossing through to the reload on a river barge, go right down the river to”

Coptis, which is way down past the Delta. And at Coptis unload again onto a caravan. Now you've got to get across the eastern desert. And a caravan by then, let's just clarify. So these are like camos and camos, this is like camos, this is like camos, it has to go across a desert. It's about 200 kilometers of deserts to get from the river. Coptis on the river to get to the Red Sea. And you can take a whole number of routes that we know, they're all there. The direct one,

east-west, goes to Iosformus, which is a Red Sea port. That's the shortest route. And it's not necessarily the best. You could take a longer route instead of going from the river direct east to hit the sea, you could go southeast and hit the sea much further down the Red

“Sea, as it were. They're unique. They're unique. Yeah, that's the other port. Now again, you've got”

robbers and highwaymen and all sorts of horrors to face. And what the Romans, by the time we're talking about in 1/3 century, the whole area, all the road networks were beautifully protected. Along the roads at certain intervals, at days, journey intervals, there were rest places, fortified rest places with water for the animals and the people and and garrisons to protect them and so on. So it was safe to travel. And one of the advantages we're going down to Beriniki was

that you missed the really dodgy winds at the northern end of the Red Sea. So if you went to Constant Maris for us, you would be in a fairly rough area, a weather weather wise, so you cut out the bad weather and the currents and so on and spend more time on the desert and you get to Beriniki and then you get on a boat there and then sail south. Now where you go then depends a lot on what you want to do, you might only want to go to the southern end of the Red Sea to trade with

people there who are bringing stuff across the Indian Ocean. But you might want to go right out. And one of the places of favorite places to go to was an Adulis, Adulis, which is in Axem, that is De Mavaksam, yes, in Ethiopia. Adulis is actually in an Eritrea, but Adulis is one of the ports of the kingdom of Axem, which is a very big kingdom that develops by the time we're talking

about the third centuries, well under ways, but it's in the third fourth fifth centuries. If you

think of it sitting there on the side of the Red Sea by Eritrea, Ethiopia and now, and to the north of it, it's Nubia, it's for north of that, it's Egypt. So it's got direct routes from Nubia to Egypt.

you get rhino horns and all the rest of it, and it's got a direct route to the Sahel, the west,

“at the zone south of the Sahara Desert. So Axem sits in a very preferred place for trade and”

to acquire commodities. So if you went to Adulis, you could pick up commodities all over the place, including India, because some of the ships from India offloaded. So you might not want to go any further, you might be able to get everything onto that. We want to go further. We want to go further. Okay, so what you might do then is to sail to one of the ports on the Arabian side of the Red Sea, down at the southern end of the Red Sea, where the Red Sea gets very narrow, there is a little

narrow street where you go from the Red Sea into a much wider Gulf of Eden. Right, so this

feels like we're approaching the first big is a kind of geographic choke point, is it? That's right,

it's exactly that a choke point, because we're going from the Nile across the desert to Berenike

“or Meyers who are most of those two big Roman ports, down south through the Red Sea, past the biggest”

axon trading port of Adulis. And now we've reached this choke point, very take it away. If you visualize the Red Sea and the Gulf of Eden, more or less, right angles. Within that right angle, is the post of Arabia. Yes. On the east side of the Red Sea, on the north side of the Gulf, okay. And around that little corner, there are a range of ports. They're not in in the Roman Empire at all. They are free ports run by their own kings and so on. And you've got

Musa, okay, Lis, then round the corner into the Gulf of Eden. You've got your Daemon, which is Eden. Now, and then Ghana, which is further along the Arabian coast. And all those ports were used at this time. And they were absolutely thriving. One of the reasons they were thriving was overseas trade, obviously, but the other reason that they sit right in the middle of the area of incense. In the sense. So these ports for thousands of years being incense ports, providing incense for

the Mediterranean world and India. So they are very well linked in. And they've attracted sailors from all over the place for at least a thousand years. And then a described as really thriving with sailors rubbing shoulders, indians rubbing shoulders with Arabs and so on. And from there,

“from that little cluster of ports, it's very, very important. You can sail up the Arabian coast”

to the Gulf of the Arabian Gulf and around to India. Or you can sail down the African coast. And they were doing this. So sailing down the African coast to as far south as San Zibar. San Zibar. Yeah. And there were ports down the coast where they were picking up slaves. They were picking up ivory, rhinocorn again and turtle shells and so on. And we've also got these boats, indians coming across from India, bringing gear from India. So it really was the heart of the the ancient well,

the commercial heart of the ancient world. I love to an episode in the future about Roman trade with places like Zanzibar and Sub-Saharan Africa, long East Africa and coast. But that's one for another day. So incense, nabatines as well, so it's not just overland, trade, you know, that they're using the sea roof to get incense back to the Red Sea. But let's say we're in the Gulf of Eden, but actually rather than going up the Arabian coast, we've gone along the African coast of

what is today, Somalia, so we go on down that way and then we plan to go across the Indian Ocean

to West India. What's this island that you meet first of all, which also seems really fascinating

in this story? Yep. If you imagine the horn of Africa, which is the most eastern part of Africa's sticking out, it's Somalia. Yes. Off the Horn of Africa, somewhere about 250 kilometres off the Horn of Africa is this island of Sokotra. Sokotra. It belongs to Yemen now. It is absolutely perfectly sighted as a port of trade because people sailors of all in the possible ways like to use islands as ports of trade where they can exchange goods. And so Pratso, we know, for example,

that it was a base for Indian sailors and because they were describing their names on rock surfaces and so on, from all through the period that we're talking about, they were Indians present there

And I would guess that Sokotra was became more and more and more important as the conditions

“on land became politically slightly unstable. Sokotra became more of a centre because it was safer.”

And again, we had told that sailors were rubbing shoulders there a whole time, and people were learning about each other then, learning each other's ways, and picking up information about where to go, where the best deals could be done and so on. So you can just imagine what life in the ports would have been like there. So our Roman sailors, perhaps of decided to stop at Sokotra. And I guess is that those who wanted to go to India wouldn't have power, they probably would have

started at somewhere like Okeles, which is where Pliny says those going to India start off from. So we're still on the Arabian coast. You take on your last water on the Arabian coast, no doubt, take on a load of incense and the so on because you can flop that in Indian ports along with

“whatever you're bringing from July to the Mediterranean world. And from there, you could,”

but in the third century the Romans wouldn't sail up the Arabian coast and across the Gulf of

Amman and then down the Indian coast. They wouldn't do that because the Sessanians were now occupying what is Persia, in fact, and they were controlling the Arabian Gulf. So it was a bit dangerous for a Roman to go up there. So what you could do is sail part way up the Arabian coast and then out to sea across to India using one of the routes that would be available during the monsoon winds and you would hit the coast of India by barricom. So is this the first port that you

would see? That would be a problem. Yes, you could go directly to barbaricom. You could go to another

port as a garer or you could go to a third port, Mozilla's all the way down the coast. So the northern

most of the ports would be barbaricom. That was a popular port to go to. But the sailing routes, you could take which one you wanted to go wherever you wanted because there were the three routes that were used time and time and time again. And those were the ones that were recommended by the harriplus. Barbaricom is an interesting name for a port isn't it? So it sounds like that barbarian. So does that give a hint to that? You know, there are all these foreigners here, I guess.

“Yeah, yes, I think so because there are some Sithians that settled down in that area as well.”

It was a real mixing port from people. We should say where it is. It's actually at the death of the Indus. It feels like the Indus River Valley. So somewhere that actually Alexander the Great had been before. Is that a taller in that that area? That's right, that's right. It was a site that is Alexander had gone when he gone through the whole of the Persian Empire. He ended up there. And then he actually set up set a couple of ships off from there

to explore the seaways. So it was a port, you know, an important port in that time. Its importance is the link that it gives north through the Indus Valley. Commodities that were coming from the north was silk from the Silk Road. Commodities like turquoise as you're right and rare stones like that coming down from Iran and Afghanistan. So you're getting commodities coming down from north and also commodities coming from all over India.

So it was a very good place to go for a trader. Then that's a gyro further south. It was another good port. It was with on the Indian coast again because it latched into a very productive area for all kinds of commodities like rice and wheat and things like that. It was very prolific but also all kinds of oils and some rice. The Romans imported rice from Barry Garza or Bazaar. Well, it was one of the things listed as an export from the stick.

I wasn't a thought about the Romans the device. I didn't know that rice would have made it back, but it looked there. Well, it's what the the paraphrase mentions. Well, it's rice, it's one of the commodities. So that gave you a different set of commodities. If you had a sort of shopping list, you'd choose your port and choose which of the monsoon winds to catch to get to a port. But the really exciting one I think is this one directly across from Achilles to Missouri.

It's on the Malabar coast now. So it's done. Where India is coming to a point to southern

“point is quite close. It's the western side of India before you get to the tip of the Indian”

Peninsula. Carola. Is it Carola? Yeah, yeah. We know quite a lot about Missouri. I mean, it's the one that Pliny talks about. I should have said that the paraphrase written in the

first century BC gives a lot of information, but Pliny who writes natural histories is about the

seventh is the first century century. He gives a huge amount more information. So during that time, the whole Indian Ocean trade has opened up and he's got access to vast amounts of information. Missouri, for example, we are told that there are areas where the foreigners live. So there are foreigners, they might be Romans, they might be Roman traders, you know, they could be Arab traders, but there's the foreigners quarter there. There's even a temple to Augustus. That's interesting.

“So it does suggest that the Romans were present in large numbers. Reading Pliny,”

it clearly is the favourite route. It's the route that they went to. Now the beauty of Missouri is that down the west coast of India is a sort of mountain range, cuts the coast off from much of the rest of the peninsula, but at Missouri there are routes through the mountain range. So that commodities landing at that port could go inland and across the peninsula and that clearly is what happens. And commodities could come from the peninsula through the mountains, from Missouri.

It's almost certainly the place it's now called platinum. An excavation went on that has been going on there for some years and it has produced evidence of maritime trade. It's produced Roman coins, Roman things, Arabian material. It's produced harbour works. There's a beautiful piece of excavation. They didn't a few years ago showing the harbour side with brick work all the way down. It's protected and in the mud at the bottom about six meters long was preserved.

And in the mud of the harbour, it's the most amazing array of stuff, seeds of just about everything.

I found it suddenly rice and wheat and watermelon and grapes and all sorts of exotic things. So you can imagine all these commodities coming in and not just the hardware we talk about, you know the last pottery and things like that, but all the foods that were mean moved around as well. So there's some archaeological evidence from the Missouri as well. It's a wonderful opportunity to excavate a major point.

So to be very much at a sense from our Roman sources that Missouri was the furthest that Roman traders seem to have gone if they were looking for precious commodities from India to bring back.

“You mentioned that temple of Augusta which I think is also shown in an ancient map,”

which is really interesting. They built a temple there to make the Romans feel at home. But does this feel like a natural end point for many Roman sailors that they wouldn't go further

than this usually, Roman traders? To start with, yes, the periplis, remember first century BC,

Pliny, first century AD, their information runs out. They've got some hints of what's around the corner as they're wearing the bear, then go on. But that's, you know, it's hearsay, then it's stuck picked up in the harbour like Missouri, for example. It's harbour torque. They're hard knowledge runs up there. But when we get to a little bit later, middle of the second century, but 140, we've got to tell them is geography. Now, tollamy was an Alexandrin who wrote this

geography of the world. Yeah, and to avoid confusion, this is an intellectual called tollamy and not the tollamy we mentioned earlier. This is a tollamy writing under the time of the Romans. That's right, Claudius, Claudius, tell me. Yes, just a plain old author. He gathers together all the information he had about the world. And now, he's got a lot more in, well, not a lot more, but he's got more information. And what he does is talk about Trilanka, for example,

he knows a lot about it. Pliny knows that he exists. Indeed, and there is a Greek another Alexandrin,

Ireland existed, but so little is said about it until tollamy. So, by the second century, Trilanka

is now part of the system. You're getting Romans going, oh well, you're getting chips coming from the west, going to Trilanka. It's Tapraban, it's called, Pliny actually talks about a customs officer from the Red Sea. Someone gets blown off course, and he lands up on Trilanka. So, this must be first century 80. He stays in the court of the King of Trilanka, and tells him all about the ones of the Roman world. The King is so excited, but he sends an ambassador to Rome, to the Emperor. So, you can see

“these links beginning to grow. And, really, if no, anyone looking at the map would see how important”

Trilanka was to the East West Trade, again, we know from archaeology that there were two major ports there, there's one on the north side, and that's the port called Mentei. It would be the port used by ships that were rounding southern end of India, and beginning to go up the east coast of India, Mentei would be, they've got up this straight between the Indian mainland and Trilanka and Mentei would be a port there. So, that was an important port for those going north. And then for those wanting

to go across the bed then go, which is the next stage, there was a port called Godavaya on the southern end of the island. That was excavated. It has whole range of material. It's got to Roman coins, for example, found there, and pottery from Han China. So, now we've got the Chinese, or people carrying Chinese goods are at least going to Trilanka. This is like an maritime East-Beat's West coming. That isn't where the two come together. This is like the bedroom hoard as well on the

main lag, it's in the area. It's like an equipment isn't it? The central area where now and also, correctly, I love the fact that you mentioned that I had no idea that ambassadors from a shoreline king went to the Roman world. That was a really cool. But going back to this, maybe we could even imagine, maybe a Roman ship or an Indian ship with Roman goods reaching Trilanka, coming from the West, but in the same port, there actually be Chinese ships that came from South

East Asia. It's a distinct possibility, although at this stage, the Han won terribly interested

“in the very human sequence. So, I think it's on balance of evidence. It's more likely that these”

were Chinese goods brought across by ships, millierships, or Indian ships bringing things back. I think we can't prove it. But it's still what we plan. It's still an open question. Well, let's go on from there, Barry, you mentioned the next stage, which is crossing the Bay of Bengal. So, how would we get from Sri Lanka to South East Asia to get across the Bay of Bengal?

First of all, what do we know that the Romans knew? And again, we put a rely on Trilanka.

Yeah, Trilanka gets a bit vague from this point. He knows Trilanka very well. If you look at any map that is drawn up based on what Trilanka's information Trilanka gives, Trilanka is very large. India is small. Trilanka is very large. So, it's important to him. And India isn't terribly important. So, it's the important place. Now, beyond that, what Trilanka talks about is golden cosinesis, which is almost certainly the time-a-lay an insular down to Sumatra and Jav. That's

sort of area. Beyond that, the Great Gulf, which would be the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, and beyond that, he talks about China. And he uses two words for China, and this I'm absolutely fascinating. One is Sinai, which is rather like China, you know, it's a sort of word. Yes. So, you know, yeah, like Sinai, yeah. Then the other word he uses is Cedica, which is silk. And he's using these two words, and he possibly doesn't realise that the China that he is seeing

from a sea is the same China, but he's producing the silk. He divides them into two. So, he's got

“a sort of vague idea of China as being beyond the Great Gulf. So, that's what a Roman of the second”

third century would have in their mind. You know, going back to your question, how did they get there?

You could sail all the way up these coasts of India to the Ganges and down. And there's evidence

ports, Roman pots of the 1st century BC 1st century AD. And I should've said huge numbers of Roman

“kinds are found in India as well. So, you could do that round the Bay of Bengal trip as it were.”

Or you could just go straight across. Ships did go straight across. So, there's no reason why a Roman would need to go all the way around the land. A Roman, catching a lift on a local ship or talking to local sailors and saying, "Show me the way across." So, the specialised Indian ships by this time, you know, given how great sea fair is they would have been. Oh, if they were Roman's going that far, all of Roman goods, they wouldn't be in their Roman cargo vessels anymore. They probably

would be on a specialised Indian ship. What also said the Indian ships were, they were especially

built and they were very good for that kind of sea. They might well have changed ships at a number of ports. You know, it would don't have to think of a Roman galle doing its journey right across.

“The probability has changed ships at a number of ports. Then they would hit the Tai Malay peninsula,”

just hit it in the middle. That is something of a barrier. Now, if you wanted to get across into the South China Sea, you could do it by going between the Tai Malay peninsula and Sumatra and down the straits of Malaka. The Malakas, right around the end of the Malay peninsula and into the sea. So, you could do it direct by sea if you knew the route and there's no reason why you shouldn't do it. What the archaeology suggests is that one of the favourite routes was going across

to where the peninsula was at its narrowest, but the craft peninsula, it's called Haare. It's only about 70 kilometers wide there and you would offload your stuff on the west shore and it would be taken by a portage across the ports on east shore and then you would load it up on another boat and take it through the South China Sea. And that's we know from the archaeology on from ports

“along that that crucial little narrow bit that there were large numbers of people, traders from”

Arab world from India, Roman goods coming in and Chinese goods coming in. So, it was a real interface again between the South China Sea system and the Indian Ocean system. Some of the material from one of the ports on the east side of the peninsula suggests that Indian craftsmen were there at work because they were working metals in the same way the Indian was worked metals. So, you probably got these very cosmopolitan ports with foreigners everywhere and all with their different skills

adding to their economy in some way and taking from their economy. But real ports of trade in the sense of the word that this is where everything happened. Our Roman traders then if they were still attached to their goods and they had broken over glass and they would get off on the west side and craft an insular across the peninsula, pick up another ship. Now that would presumably be a ship

used to the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea. One of the first places that it would almost

certainly stop at would be in what is now the Meekan Delta, which is Cambodia Vietnam, an insular Cambodia Vietnam. And it was a place that the Chinese called Funan Funan and a place which Colombia refers to as well as Categara, Categara. And those two places are almost certainly the same. Categara is Funan. So, tolemy is this like the furthest that he mentions. He mentions this area Funan or Categara as he say, which is like Cambodian South Vietnam today. Yep, he will have heard

of that and I don't know whether the name actually comes from but his description fits and the measurements he gives fits. So, here is a place known to the Romans which is absolutely central in the South China Sea system. A settlement there could occale. Occale is now in Vietnam, a very large settlement and it's joined by canals to other settlements. So, it's a real center activity and there's Indian material there, there's Roman material there, there's Chinese material there.

And again, it's one of these imports where all the ships met. And then from there, if you wanted to get to China, you would then sail up the coast of Vietnam, Champagne. So, it was called in that time where there are a number of little states or maritime states. And you would end more or less

important Chinese port. It's now in Hanoi. It was in the time we're talking about was in Hanoi.

And we can presume as well. I mean, Funean, which also seems to be this big trading place. That also had strong ties with Hanoi as well. As soon as we get into the Gulf of Thailand and further east, are we very much in? I'd tell you, I'd say like Kline Kingdom territory of the hand where there's dominant power and they have close connections with all these people. Yes, um, the Han Chinese were moving down the coast south. They'd got to the red river area by the stage.

So, they occupied that. And the Champagne region were these little free states down the coast of Vietnam. But they were in different sorts of relationships with the Chinese. So, they were almost ready to be taken over by the Chinese. They weren't. They were almost. So, we're getting close and close and closer to China. But then, but landing, if you landed in the north of the Red River, you would be in Chinese territory. And then it would just be a matter of going around

to Panyu, which is the port in South China, the main port in South China, was founded by the

“oil, just before the hand in the state. In about 2014, I think it was. That is Ganchou.”

Now, the big maritime port of Ganchou. That's where you would stop. And if you were an ambassador with your taunt of shells and you're pouring over to that. And you're broken glass about the country that didn't survive the journey. Then you would have to go by road up to wherever the impromos. So, Ganchou and that, so those are the final destination ports. They're the Chinese equivalent to somewhere like New York's Hormos or a Baron E. K. Or, I guess, an ex-Andrine.

Well, the Alexander. Yes, the Alexander. So, that is quite the journey, isn't it? And to be able to, you know, use it with the Chinese sources, with the archaeology and the Roman sources, as well, to piece it together, this theoretical idea of how Roman goods could have got from the Roman Empire to Hanchina via these maritime routes to all of these Cosmopolitan ports. You know, almost two thousand years ago, it's an amazing story to retell. It is, but what it reflects is

going back to this idea of how mobile humans are and how they have this, the quizzative design. Now, as an archaeologist, I keep coming back to this. It's a driving force. It's acquisition. Humans, the most mobile of all animals, after all. This, a quizzative desire, building networks. Very, very early on. And then what we can see archaeologically is how these networks

come into existence and die down and the new networks grow. But always, there's a movement

“of contact and trade and exchange. Now, I think this, the Rome China stories is probably the”

most exciting of them all. This is a theoretical question and something from me who doesn't know anything about this. But if the hand dynasty didn't collapse in the third century AD, do you think there would have been a growing interest from them of maritime trade going westwards? Do you think we would have had more literary evidence from the hand called an equivalent of the parables or something like that, detailing a bit more about Chinese ships going west and maybe

reaching somewhere like Sri Lanka interacting with Roman goods coming from further west? And then us getting that perspective. Because we've used like tollamy and cleaning in the parables in the chat. We've mentioned a few Chinese sources, but do you think if the hand dynasty hadn't collapsed,

we'd have had more and they would have more focus on that sea travel? China has always been interesting,

“I think, and still is, because unlike the west, which is unconstrained geographically,”

China is very constrained geographically. If you think of the rivers of China being the the heart of China, it's constrained by the mountains, the Himalayas, it's constrained by the govy desert in the north, it's constrained by the forests in the south. And it's just got a small sea front. And for a long period of time, China was never really interested in the sea. I think there's something about the geography that makes China in terms of its roots more

interested in the land roots than the sea roots. And then it's not until you get to the mean period, 40-50th century now, when suddenly they get terribly excited by the sea, and they get the abnormal urgent hair to go right across to Africa. He goes up to Mecca, for example, with a great fleet of trading ships. Then suddenly the Ming emperor says, "No, finish. Come on,

the 20th century. All right, this has been absolutely fascinating. We've completed our voyage

“from the Roman Empire to these Chinese ports. But as you also said earlier, almost an extra step here,”

evidence of Roman goods has been found in Japan and the Korean peninsula as well. So I guess could we go a step further and say, maybe they go into another ship and that Roman goods went by the sea further north and then across to Japan. It's possible. My guess is the Korean material and stuff in Japan actually went in through local systems. But I might be wrong. That's the beauty of archaeology. Last but certainly not least, you have written a book which covers all of this,

“these incredible maritime trade routes from the time of Roman and in this tea China and so much more”

the book is called and it is about. It's called "Driven by the Monsoons" and it's literally about what I've called the Underbelly of Eurasia. See the links, the West, the East, and I start with the Upper Paleolithic. Or I know, I start with the Paleolithic, with the homo sapiens moving out of Africa and we end with the formation of the British East India Company in 1600. Wow, it's a beautiful book. The amount of detail you've been able to go into,

“just for this episode Barry is brilliant. And I must say, lastly, I hope you don't mind me asking,”

Barry, you are now in your mid-80s, if I'm not interested in it. Nudge in 86. Nudge in 86 and you are still so eloquent and such amazing speaker and you are still hammering out books. You are a legend in the field and there's so much more still to come. I hope so. I've got another book in preparation and I'm just thinking about the next.

No, always such a pleasure and it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking

the time to come back on the show today. So pleasure for you. Thank you. Well, there you go. There was the one and only Barry come there for reimagining a journey of Roman goods from the Red Sea in Egypt all the way via the Indian Ocean and places like Sri Lanka, the Malacca streets and so on. All the way to the ports of Han China, some 2,000 years ago, I hope you enjoyed the episode. Now, if you'd like to hear more from Barry,

a bit of an insight into his incredible life story, while we did record an extra bonus

episode with him where we shine the spotlight on Barry on his career, we released it a few weeks ago to our ancient subscribers. So if you'd like to hear about Barry and his story, well if you sign up, you can listen to that special bonus episode. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Ancients. Don't forget you can also sign up to history hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe.

That is all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.