Turn the usual world map sideways

A familiar European history moves from Greece to Rome and then westward. Looking instead across the routes between the Mediterranean, Central Asia, Persia, India and China reveals repeated exchanges of goods, beliefs, technologies and disease. The centre of the story shifts with the question being asked.

Calling these connections “Silk Roads” can imply a single stable highway, when routes changed and most travellers covered only sections. The practical observation is to distrust maps that make one region the natural middle. Redraw the frame and causes once treated as distant background may become nearby and active.