In 1900, a Taoist monk came upon a cave near the Chinese town of Dunhuang. Inside, he found thousands of ancient manuscripts. They revealed a vast amount of evidence about the so-called ‘Silk Road’: the great trade routes which had stretched from Central Asia, through desert oases, to China, throughout the first millennium.
Besides silk, the Silk Road helped the dispersion of writing and paper-making, coinage and gunpowder. And it was along these trade routes that Buddhism reached China from India.
The history of these transcontinental links reveals a dazzlingly complex meeting and mingling of civilisations, which lasted for well over a thousand years.
Contributors
Frances Wood, Head of the Chinese Section at the British Library
Tim Barrett, Professor of East Asian History at the School of Oriental and African Studies
Naomi Standen, Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at Newcastle University
