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Subject: Fw: [Ind-Arch] Sea Route to Rival Silk Road Found
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 07:44:12 +0100
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From: "V.C.Vijayaraghavan"
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New evidence of extensive trade contacts by sea between south India and Rome
rivalling Silk Route
----- Original Message -----
From: "ymalaiya"
To:
Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2002 11:51 PM
Subject: [Ind-Arch] Sea Route to Rival Silk Road Found
> By THOMAS H. MAUGH II, TIMES STAFF WRITER
>
>
> New excavations at the Egyptian Red Sea port of Berenike show that an
> extensive sea trade existed between India and the Middle East from
> the 3rd century BC to the 7th century AD, supplementing the much more
> widely known Silk Road.
>
> Large quantities of spices, textiles and other exotic materials were
> offloaded at Berenike, carried by camel train across the Arabian
> Desert to the Nile and then shipped by boat to the Mediterranean port
> of Alexandria and throughout the Roman Empire, according to
> researchers from UCLA and the University of Delaware.
>
> The sea route between India and Egypt appears to be more productive
> than we ever imagined," said UCLA archeologist Willeke Wendrich, who
> co-led the expedition. Ship remains found at the site, furthermore,
> indicate that the vessels were built in India and most likely crewed
> by Indians.
>
> "This turns around our way of viewing the world at that time,"
> Wendrich said. "We are used to looking at it from the point of view
> of the Roman Empire, but clearly a lot of the initiative was on the
> Indian side. It was not a one-way trade initiated by Rome."
>
> Berenike "is one of those really productive finds," said archeologist
> Stanley Burstein of Cal State LA, who was not involved in the
> research. "Most of the [artifacts] are not spectacular, but they are
> revolutionary in improving our understanding of how this trade
> worked."
>
> Berenike--sometimes also called Berenice--was founded in 275 BC by
> Pharaoh Ptolemy II, who named it after his mother.
>
> Its original purpose was for the importation of war elephants from
> Africa, but its uses rapidly expanded.
>
> It was a natural harbor, protected from the prevailing northern winds
> by the Ras Banas peninsula and far from the pirates operating from
> the Arabian Peninsula. Its chief drawback was the lack of locally
> produced food and water. Food had to be imported from the Nile
> Valley, about 200 miles away, and water from wells five miles outside
> town.
>
> Nonetheless, the city flourished for nearly 900 years before being
> abandoned for reasons that are not yet clear. Fortunately for
> archeologists, no other settlements were built on the ruins, and the
> city's remote location protected it from looting. The site is also
> strategically located in a military district near the Sudanese
> border, and access was strictly limited until recently.
>
> "This is a part of the world that was isolated and about which very
> little was known," said archeologist Donald White of the University
> of Pennsylvania's University Museum. The Berenike excavations "have
> been able to open our eyes about the nature of trade between the Far
> East and the classical world."
>
> Wendrich and Steven Sidebotham of Delaware have been working at the
> site since they were given permission by Egypt's Supreme Council on
> Antiquities in 1994, and their most recent findings are in a report
> to be published today in the journal Sahara.
>
> "We were surprised by the sheer quantity of things," Wendrich said.
> One notable finding involved peppercorns, a valuable Indian spice
> widely used in the Roman Empire.
>
> Excavations at other sites have often yielded small quantities of
> peppercorns, she noted--five at one site, 14 at another and so forth.
>
> Through 1999, the team had found about 1,600 peppercorns at Berenike.
> Then they found a pot containing 16 pounds of the spice. "If you find
> it in the trash, and large quantities are stored there, then the
> amount transported through the town must have been mind-boggling,"
> she said.
>
> The discarded peppercorns indicate the prosperity of the community,
> Wendrich noted. That prosperity was also reflected in the discovery
> of lavish tapestries, imported marble and "very nice" glassware from
> Alexandria.
>
> The team also found substantial quantities of teak, which grows in
> India and is not indigenous to Egypt. "You'd expect to find woods
> native to Egypt, like mangrove and acacia, but the largest amount of
> wood we found at Berenike was teak," Sidebotham said.
>
> Much of the teak was clearly recycled material from ships that had
> worn out or been damaged beyond repair. The team also found materials
> consistent with ship-patching, including copper nails and metal
> sheeting.
>
> The region's dry climate preserved organic material from India,
> including sailcloth dated to AD 30 to 70, basketry and matting. In a
> dump from Roman times, the team found Indian coconuts and batik cloth
> from the 1st century, as well as an array of exotic gems, including
> sapphires, as well as glass beads that appear to have come from Sri
> Lanka and carnelian beads from India.
>
> They also found the remains of cereal and animals indigenous to sub-
> Saharan Africa, suggesting the possibility of a three-point trade
> route that took goods from southern Africa to India and then back
> across the Indian Ocean to Egypt.
>
> Berenike was long thought to have been abandoned in the 3rd or 4th
> centuries, primarily because Greek and Latin texts did not mention it
> after that.
>
> "But we found that, in the 4th century, there was an enormous boom in
> activity," Wendrich said. "The town was completely rebuilt and
> expanded," probably by the Byzantine Empire.
>
>
> http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-000041336jun12.story?
> coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dworld
