Beyond the legend of the Silk Road
By Dr Peter Weiming Jia
Dr Peter W. JIA has a BA in China and MA in Anthropology from Macquarie University, and PhD from the University of Sydney. He has been working in East Asian archaeology for many years. Now, he has a teaching/research ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Sydney working on the project of prehistoric archaeology in the Junggar Bsin, Xinjiang, China in relation to the early contact between East and West in Eurasian prehistory.
The Silk Road was a famous ancient trade route between East and West. It has been recorded in many historic documents in the 2000 years. The Silk Road starts from Xi'an in China extending through northwest China, Central Asia, Middle East to Europe, and is around 7000 kilometres long. Many ancient people travelled between the East and West along the Silk Road, such as Marco Polo. Xinjiang in northwest China is a key area for studying the Silk Road because it is a junction between the East and the West.
Xinjiang has a beautiful landscape with mountains, deserts and grassland, river valleys and oases. The Silk Road was formed along these grasslands, river valleys and oases. The ancient people created many flourishing civilizations in this area, but, today all that is left are the many ruins of ancient cities, villages and cemeteries. Modern farmers and herders still live in this area and they continue to make the legend of the Silk Road.
Ancient exchange through these routes carried on for thousands of years between the East and West, but it is not known how many things were exchanged during that time. Today Mainland China repeatedly tells us things such as gunpowder, paper, the compass, printing, and of cause silk and tea, were brought from the East to the West. But was there anything that the East adapted from the West in exchange?
From the East, today we know that the Chinese are very good at planting various vegetables in their “Chinese Garden”, but among these vegetables planted in China today, tomatoes, onions and carrots at the very least, were originally from the West, and were possibly brought to China through the Silk Road thousands of years ago. Also, China has a long history of agriculture with rice and millet cultivation possibly spanning over 10000 years, but wheat, barley, sorghum and oat were from the West. Horses, sheep, goats, and religions like Buddhism, Muslin all made their way from the West through the Silk Road.
Did anything else now in China originate from the West? Yes, in fact, most Chinese musical instruments may be from West. One of the most famous Chinese strings is called the “Erhu” which produces beautiful soft music with a sad quality. Many string instruments with a similar shape to the Erhu but in varying size can be found in China. They all play different roles in the Chinese national orchestra just like the violin and cello in the West. All these string instruments are called “- Hu”, such as Jing-hu, which is used specifically for Chinese opera, Ban-hu made of timber, Zhong-hu etc. If an instrument is called “Hu” it is possible that it was originally from the West, based on ancient Chinese inscriptions. For instance, the ancient Chinese called people from the West Hu-Ren; Ren means ‘people’ and Hu means ‘from the West’. So all musical instruments with the name of “-Hu” may have come from the West along the Silk Road.
Most string musical instruments in China now were actually were from the West such as the “Guzeng”, Yangqin and Pipa, often seen today as symbolic items of Chinese traditional musical, and play a significant role in Chinese national folklore music. But they all came from the West via the Silk Road.
The only musical instruments that can be thought of as having Chinese origins may be the flute, bell, Qing and drum. These four instruments produce very mysterious sounds, and were apparently used for royal ceremonial functions in ancient times. But without the many string instruments brought over from the West, Chinese music would not have as much variety and richness of sound as with only these original four.
Was there any contact between the East and West before our historical records of the Silk Road, dating to some 2000 years ago? The answer is yes. There was some contact between the East and West before 200BC when the Silk Road was described in ancient manuscripts. For example, several ancient cemeteries were discovered in the deep desert in Xinjiang. Many naturally mummified human bodies were unearthed and some of these bodies have been identified as ancient European or from central Asia (Fig. 3). They are lie side by side with people with Eastern features. These cemeteries are dated to 4000 years ago with no written records.
There is more evidence telling us of the possible early contact between the East and West. For instance, archaeologists have found a cemetery containing two types of pottery in the burials at Hami in Xinjiang, China. One group of pottery has a cylindrical shape with a round bottom and complex painting on the surface. Another has a round belly shape with two handles and well designed painting patterns. The first group is very close to the ancient pottery found in the Eurasian Steppes westwards of Hami, from 4000 year ago and the second group looks the same as the 4000 year old pottery found at Gansu, in northwest China which is eastwards of Hami. Human bodies found in the burials also appear to be from two major groups according to anthropological study: ancient East Asian and ancient Indo-European, plus a mix of the two.
Just how early contact began between the East and West is an interesting question, but it is also difficult to answer. Archaeologists have found some very old stone tools in China that may have originated from the West, dated to more than 25000 years old. According to the study of stone tool technology, the tradition of small stone tools originated in northern China around million years ago. Some archaeologists even speculate that this tradition crossed the Eurasian grasslands and extended into the West as early as a million years ago. However, these assumptions of the early contact between the East and West need further evidence from archaeological research along the Silk Road. What we do know is that the contact between the ancient people in very early periods is far beyond what we have always believed.
