Silkroad Foundation
P.O. Box 2275, Saratoga CA 95070

5000-500 B.C

• 3200 Horse domesticated on south Russian steppe.
• 3000 Minoan civilization starts, the earliest in Europe.
• 3000 Silk first produced in China.
• 3000 Sumerians develop first writing system.
• 2500 Domestication of the Bactrian and Arabian camel, vital for desert travel.
• 1700 Horse-drawn chariot introduced in Near East.
• 1500 Iron technology developed in Asia Minor.
• 1500 Seminomadic stockbreeding tribes inhaabit steppes.
• 900 Spread of mounted nomadism.
• 753 Rome founded.
• 707 Cimmerians, earliest-known mounted nomads, defeat kingdom of Urartu in Near East.
• 900-700 Scythians and Sarmatians appear in the northern steppes - two of the first races learn to ride horses and wear trousers. stirrup.
• 600s Zoroaster born in Persia.
• 560s Buddha born in Nepal.
• 550 Achaemenid Empire established in Persia.
• 500s Chinese adopt nomadic style, wear trousers and ride horses.
• 450 Herodotus visits Greek trading colony of Olbia to gather information on Scythians.
• 551-479 Confucius born in China.

• Empire of Alexander the Great expands into Asia. Greek culture into Central Asia.

• Roman expansion begins.
• Greco-Bactrian kingdom develops in Central Asia.
• Parthians establish their empire in Iran.
• Qin dynasty unites the entire China for the first time.
• Chinese complete Great Wall as defense against the northern nomads' invasion.
• Han dynasty overthrows Qin and develops its vast empire.
• Buddhism begins to spread north. Gandhara art type emerges and starts a new art style - Serindian.
• Paper first made in China.
• Achaemenid Empire of Persia.

• Stirrup appears in Indian and Central Asia
• Greek city-states come under Roman rule.
• The Xiongnu, later called Huns rise to power in Central Asia and invade Chinese western border regions.
• Han Emperor, Wu-ti's interests in Central Asia cause him to command the Chang Ch'ien expeditions to the West, (Fergana and the Yueh-chih). Celestial Horses introduced to China.
• Han power reaches Tarim region. The Silkroad under China's control and the route to the West now open.

• Mithridates, Parthian king, sends ambassadors to both Sulla and Wu-ti to provide an important link between Rome and China.
• Parthians defeat Romans at Carrhae. One of the most disastrous in Roman history.
• Roman conquers Gaul.
• Egypt under Roman rule. Gives Rome access to Red Sea and Spice Route trade.
• Rome officially becomes an empire.

• Silk first seen in Rome.
• Buddhism begins to spread from India into Central Asia.
• Roman Syria develops the technique of blowing glass. The industry expands.
• Kushan Empire of Central Asia. Sogdians trading on Silk Route.
• Xiongnu raids upset Chinese power in Tarim region.
• Death of Jesus Christ. Spread of Christianity begins.
• Chinese General Pan Ch'ao defeats Xiongnu and keeps the peace in the Tarim Basin. The stability of the Silkroad popularizes the caravan trades into two routes - north and south.
• China sends the first ambassador to Rome from Pan Ch'ao's command, but he fails to reach Rome.
• Graeco-Egyptian geographer, Claudius Ptolemy, writes his Geography, attempts to map the Silkroad.

• Rome sends the first Roman envoy over sea to China.
• Roman empire at its largest. A major market for Eastern goods.
• Buddhism reaches China.
• For the next few centuries, Buddhism flourishes, becoming the most popular religion in Central Asia, replacing Zoroastrianism.
• The four great empires of the day - the Roman, Parthian, Kushan, and Chinese - bring stability to the Silkroad.

• Silk is woven into cloth across Asia, but using Chinese thread.
• Han dynasty ends. China splits into fragments.
• Sassanians rise to power from Parthians. Strong cultural influence along the trade routes.
• Barbarian attacks on the Roman Empire.
• Death of Mani in Persia. Manichaeism spreads throughout Asia, not to die out until the 14th century.

• Stirrup introduced to China by the northern nomads
• Secret of sericulture begins to spread west along the Silkroad.
• Xiongnu invade China again. China further dissolved into fragments.
• Constantinople becomes Rome's capital.
• Christianity becomes the official Roman religion.
• Dun Huang caves starts to appear and becomes the world's largest Buddha caves.
• Huns attack Europe.
• Roman Empire splits into two.
• Fa-hsien, one of the first known Chinese Silkroad travellers by foot and a Buddhist monk, sets out for India.

• A Chinese princess smuggles some silkworm eggs out of China. Silkworm farms appear in Central Asia.
• New techniques in glass production introduced to China by the Sogdians.
• Visigoths invade Italy and Spain.
• Angles and Saxons rise in Britain.
• Western Roman Empire collapses.
• Frankish kingdom formed.

• Silkworm farms appear in Europe.
• Nestorian Christians reach China.
• Kingdom of Hephthalites (White Huns) in northern Asia, conquering Sogdian territory.
• Buddhism reaches Japan.
• Split of the Turkish Kaganate into Eastern and Western Kaganates. Western Turks move to Central Asia from Mongolian plateau. At the Chinese end of Central Asia, the Eastern Turks or Uighurs are in control.
• Sui dynasty reunites China.
• Sassanian Empire at its greatest extent in Central Asia.

• Roman Empire becomes Byzantine Empire.
• Tang dynasty rules in China. For the first two centuries, the Silk Road reaches its golden age. China very open to foreign cultural influences. Buddhism flourishes.
• The Islamic religion founded.
• Death of Muhammad. Muslim Arab expansion begins.
• Xuan Zang's pilgrimage to India.
• The Avars from the steppes introduces stirrups to Europe.
• Sassanian Persia falls to the Arabs.
• Muslims control Mesopotamia and Iran, along with the Silk and Spice routes.

• Arabs conquer Spain in Europe, which introduces much Eastern technology and science to Europe.
• Arabs defeat Chinese at Talas and capture Chinese papermakers, which introduces paper making into Central Asia and Europe.
• Block printing developed in China
• Tang dynasty begins to decline, and with it, the Silkroad.
• Glassmaking skill introduced to China by Sogdians.

• First porcelain made in China.
• Gunpowder invented in China and spread to the West by the 13th century.
• All foreign religions banned in China.
• Compass begins to be used by Chinese.
• Diamond Sutra dated 11 May 868, the world's oldest known printed book made in Dunhuang.
• Venice established as a city-state.

• Kirghiz Turks in control of Eastern Central Asia, establish kingdoms at Dunhuang and Turfan.
• Tang Dynasty ends. China fragmented.
• England unified for the first time.
• Playing cards invented in China and spread to Europe toward the end of 14th century.
• The Islamic Empire divides into small kingdoms.
• Sung Dynasty reunites China.
• Porcelain developed in China and exported to western Asia.

• First Crusade. Exchange of technology between Europe and Middle East.

• China divided into Northern Sung and Southern Sung.
• Muslim oust the Franks from the Levant.
• Genghiz Khan unites Mongols. Expansion of Mongol Empire begins.
• Silk production and weaving established in Italy.
• Paper money, first developed in China.

• Death of Genghis Khan.
• Mongols invade Russia, Poland, and Hungary.
• The Europe's first envoy to the East, Friar Giovanni Carpini leaves Rome for Mongol capital at Karakorum.
• Friar William Rubruck sent to Karakorum by the King of France.
• Seventh, and last, Crusade.
• Mongol control central and western Asia.
• Silk road trade prospers again under the "Pax Mongolica."
• Kublai Khan defeats China and establishes the Yuan dynasty.
• Paper money introduced to Central Asia and Iran by Mongols.
• Marco Polo leaves for the East.

• Turkish Ottoman Empire in power.
• Tamerlane, with capital in Samarkand, rises and conquers Persia, parts of Southern Russia, and northern India.
• Third Silkroad route appears in the north.
• Ibn Battuta, the first known Arab travels on a 750,000 mile journey to China via the Silkroad.
• The Black Death spreads throughout Europe.
• Paper made across Europe.
• Spinning wheel in Europe.
• Battle of Crecy between French and English, where cannons used first in Europe.
• Mongol Yuan Dynasty collapes. Chinese Ming Dynasty begins.

• Tamerlane defeats the Ottoman Turks, and causes the deaths of seventeen million people.
• Renaissance period in Europe.
• Chinese explore the Spice Routes as far as Africa
• Death of Tamerlane leads to the decline of Mongol power. Ottoman rises again in the Central Asia.
• Ottomans conquer Constantinople.
• Gutenberg printing press in use.
• China closes the door to foreigners.
• Fearing the power of Uighurs, Ming China reduces the trade and traffic dramatically in the Silkroad. The Silkroad comes to an end for purposes of silk.
• Lyon becomes the new center of the silk trade.
• Columbus reaches America.
• Vasco da Gama discovers the sea route from Europe to the East via the cape of Good Hope to Calicut in India.

• Islam becomes the religion of the entire Taklamakan region.

• Uzbek Turks appear from the north, settle in today's Uzbekistan.
• Prince Babur, descendant of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, extends his empire from the Ferghana valley to India. Founder of Mogul dynasty.
• Manchuria rises and invades China. Qing Dynasty established.

• Numbers of severe earthquakes in Central Asia damage some of the great monuments.
• Porcelain produced in Europe.
• The Manchus, a Tungusic people from Manchuria, absorb the Gobi and Altai districts.

• German scholar, Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen uses the term "Silkroad" (Seidenstrasse) for the first time.
• Manchus take over the Tarim Basin.
• Xinjiang Province created under Qing Dynasty.
• Elias crosses the Pamirs and identifies Muztagh Ata. Recommends the Wakhan corridor be established.
• Younghusband crosses the Gobi Desert, pioneering a new route from Peking to Kashgar via the Muztagh Pass.
• Hedin explores the Kun Lun and Takla Makan desert, unearthing buried cities along the old Silkroad.
• Conway in the Karakoram Mountains.
• Stein's archaeological investigations of the Takla Makan and central Asia.
• The Great Game - Tsarist Russia and British India expand in Central Asia.

• Hedin expeditions.
• Chinese revolution; end of Chinese dynasties.
• Europeans begin to travel in the Silkroad
• Tibet under China's control.
• Karakoram highway from Islamabad to Kashgar built by China and Pakistan.

ARTICLE ABSTRACTS

By Author

Adams, Douglas

"The Position of Tocharian Among the Other Indo-European bs Languages", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 104.3, 1984
Abstract: The placement of Tocharian vis-a-vis the other Indo-European groups has been something of a problem; those who have investigated the issue over the past seventy-five years have, on the basis of very limited evidence, come to a variety of conclusions. An investigation here of the phonological, morphological, and lexical isoglosses (and especially the latter) uniting Tocharian with other Indo-European language families leads to the grouping of Tocharian with Meillet's "Northwestern" group in the first instance, with particularly close ties with Germanic. The ties Tocharian has with both Greek and Indic outside of the Northwestern group reflect later contacts on the part of the pre-Tocharians with the pre-Greeks and pre-Indics as the pre-Tocharians moved progressively eastward in the late Proto-Indo-European world.

 

Barber, E.J.W.

"A Weaver's Eye View of the Second Millennium Tarim Basin Finds", Journal of Indo-European Studies, Fall/Winter 1995, Volume 23, Numbers 3 & 4, pp. 347-355
Abstract:

 

Barber, Paul T.

"Mummification in the Tarim Basin", Journal of Indo-European Studies, Fall/Winter 1995, Volume 23, Numbers 3 & 4, pp. 309-317
Abstract:

 

Chao Huashan

"New Evidence of Manichaeism in Asia: A Description of Some Recently Discovered Manichaean Temples in Turfan", Monumenta Serica, 44 (1996): 267-315
Abstract: Between 1902 and 1907, Berlin fur Volkerkunde sent three successive archaeological expeditions to Eastern Turkestan (Xinjiang), where they investigated the ruins and ancient grottoes of Turfan. Around Turfan, they discovered numberous ancient manuscripts and other relics. In 1909, the Science Academy of Russia also sent an archaeological expedtion to Xinjiang that was mainly dedicated to the investigation of the Turfan grottoes. Between 1905 and 1913, the German expedition published expedition reports and pictures proposing that among the ruins of the ancient cities of Harahoja and Gaochang there was a Manichaean temple as well as another temple which originally may have been Manichaean. In 1914, the Russian expedition published a report that mentioned that a Manichaean grotto possibly also existed in Bazaklik. In 1931, an archaeologist from the Academie Francaise also investigated this cave and, apart from confirming that it was a Manichaean religious grotto, proposed that another cave was also a Manichaean grotto.

In 1988, Takao Moriyasu from Japan's Osaka University investigated the Bazaklik grotto with the assistance of the Xinjiang authorities. In 1991, he published a monograph which pointed to another Manichaean grotto with inscriptions in the Uighur language.

The Manichaean religion was found in Iran by Mani in the third century A.D., later spreading West to Western Asia, the Mediterranean coast and Europe. It also continued to extend Eastward into Eastern Asia, Xinjiang, China's Central Plains, the Northern deserts, and the Southeast Chinese coast. In the East and the West, the Manichaean religion was an ascendant world religion that survivied into the fifteenth century. Modern research of the Manichaean religion began in the nineteenth century, taken up by Western scholars relying chiefly on Christian texts. The twentieth-century's first major discoveries related to Manichaeism were the ancient manuscripts and groud-level temple ruins that the German expedition excavated in Turfan during the early 1900s. This century's second najor discovery was of early Manichaean manuscripts dating from the third to the sixth century that were found in North Africa during the 1930's. However due to the dilapidated and fragmentary quality of the texts and the paucity of monastery ruins, our knowledge of Manichaeism and its temples has remained meagre.

In recent years, the author has led teams of research students to investigate the grottoes of Turfan. In three complexes of grottoes, these teams have succeed in identifying dozens of Manichaean grottoes. Some of these grottoes remain structurally complete, while others have retained many of their frescoes. These grottoes are extremely important for enhancing our understanding of the ancient Manichaean religion.

 

Chen Kwang-tzuu and Hiebert Fredrik T.

"The Late Prehistory of Xinjiang in Relation to Its Neighbors", Journal of World Prehistory, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1995
Abstract: Recent research by Chinese archaeologists has identified many late prehistoric (2000-400 B.C.) oases, pastoral settlements, and cemeteries in eastern Central Asia (Xinjiang province of China). The synthesis presented here organizes the data into 10 archaeological cultures, defined on the basis of ceramics, burials, small finds, and architecutre. The archaeological cultures reveal two periods, corresponding to the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. The oases cultures formed a core area before the Chinese Han period and maintained close contacts with nearby highland pastoralists in Siberia and western Central Asia. The evidence for interaction beween Xinjiang and the complex cultures in China and western Central Asia is evaluated with regard to the origin of the early Xinjiang cultures.

 

Fitzgerald-Huber, Louisa G.

"China's First Visitors From the West: Were They Indo-Europeans?" International Review of Chinese Linguistics, Volume 1 Number 1 1996
Abstract: A Comment on E G Pulleyblank's article.

Francfort, H.-P.

"The Central Asian dimension of the symbolic system in Bactria and Margiana", Antiquity, Antiquity 68 (1994):406-18
Abstract: The Bronze Age civilization of Bactria and Margiana emgerged after 2500 BC from the local cultures represneted at the sites of Sarazm, Mundigak, and Shar-i Sokhta, incorporating elements from Turkmenia (especiallyl in Margiana). from the Indus (pottery technques and some iconographic traits) and from Iran through the Proto-Elamite past and by an Elamite influx (techniques, parts of iconography and mythology), but also incorporating old Central Asia features connected with Inner Asia.

This civilization fourished in Central, in the Oxus basin 2300-1800 BC (Francfort 1984; Francfort et all. 1989; Hiebert 1993), in the deltas of the Murghab and Balkhab Rivers. It expanded to Uzbekistan, to eastern Iran and into Baluchistan (Santoni 1984; 1988; Jarrige & Hassan 1989; During-Caspers 1992; Hiebert & Lamberg-Karlovsky 1992), and Seistan (Besenval & Francfort in press), merging with the piedmont Namazga V at the Kelleli and ancient Gonur oasis of Margiana. At a later phase (Namazga VI or Mollali) 1800-1500 BC, it penetrated into Tadjikistan (works of P'yankova and Vinogradova) and northeast Afghanistan and reoccupied partially the abandoned cities of Turkmenia (Francfort 1981). Contemporary with the (late) Namazga V of Turkmenia, with the Indus Harappan and the Iranian Elamite civilizations, it is chronologically close to the supposed 'coming of the Aryans' from Central Aisa or Syria to India.

Usually, the iconographic mythological elements known from the Oxus Civilization are analysed and interpreted by a framework of Indo-Iranian (Sarianidi works in references), Aryan (Parpola 1993), Iranian (Pottier 1981; 1984; Azarpay 1992) or Elamite terminology (Amiet 1986).

But the present approach is structuralist and therefore refrains from bestowing Zoroastrian or Elamite names on deities or devils. Structuralism is out of fashion but certainly not outdated in a case like the Oxus Civilization iconography. Here the representations are taken as a whole set, in spite of their chronological dispersion, or the uncertainty of their origins from unstratified or approximately dated contexts. The relations between the iconographic elements are the primary focus, since no textual or oral tradition exists to deinfe the nature of the various elements. synchrony and sets of relations between discrete elements are basic to the structuralist approach in art history, as exemplified by the studies of Palaeolithic art by Laming-Emperaire and Leroi-Gourhan (for a fair account in English of the structural analysis in ancient art see Conkey 1989).

This approach permits a tentative reconstruction of a distinctive system of images. The Oxus Civilization scheme, representing the cycles of nature and life, is notably different from the usual and well-known interpretive schemes of the Mesopotamian, Indus or Avestan mythologies, but certainly related to the Iranian Elamite artistic language (forms and style) if not beliefs, and deeply rooted in Bactria-Margiana. In this respect, the symbolic system of the Oxus Civilization is an original expresssion of a more general Eurasian mythological universe of very ancient origin, which can be termed shamanistic.

 

 

Henning W. B.

"The Name of the Tokharian Language", Asia Major, I/N.S., 1949
Abstract: Two words have been regarded as names of the old language of Qarasahr ("I A"), which is almost universally called "Tokharian" now. One, arsi, found in documents written in that language, has been claimed as the indigenous name, used by the speakers of I A themselves; several scholars, however, foremost among them Professor H. W. Bailey, deny that arsi refers to I A at all and insist that it is a foreign word, a Prakrit of Skt. arya-, so that "arsi language" should mean aryabhasa = Sanskrit. The other, twyry, known from Uigur Turkish colophons to Buddhist books, is responsible for the introduction of the name of "Tokharian"; the late Professor Sten Konow, supported by Professor Bailey and others, rejected the opinion that the language designated as twyry by the Uighurs was the language now named "Tokharian"; in his view, twyry meant an Iranian dialect, probably Khotanese Saka. It is proposed here to re-examine the colophons in which twyry is mentioned, without entering into the problem of arsi for the present.

 

 

Mair, Victor H.

"Prehistoric Caucasoid Corpses of the Tarim Basin", Journal of Indo-European Studies, Fall/Winter 1995, Volume 23, Numbers 3 & 4, pp. 281-307
Abstract:

 

Mair, Victor H.

"The Significance of Dunhuang and Turfan Studies", "Early Iranian Influences on Buddhism in Central Asia", "History of Chinese Turkistan in the Pre-Islamic Period", Sino-Platonic Papers, March 1990, Volume 16
Abstract: There are well over a thousand scholars around the world who are working on some aspect of Dunhuang and Turfan studies. Do these two remote places in Chinese Central Asia merit such intense interest on the part of so many? In the first instance, this paper attemps to show that Dunhuang and Turfan studies, though focussing on texts and artifacts associated with these two particular sties, actually have broad ramifications for the history of East-West cutlural and commercial relations in gerneral. Another major factor is the unique quality of many materials discovered at Dunhuang and Turfan. Archaeological finds from these locations have enabled us, for the first time, to obtain an essentially first-hand look at China and some of its neighbors during the medieval period. That is to say, we can now learn, for example, about popular culture during Tang times without being forced to view it through a Confucian historiographical filter. In other words, the availability of primary materials for correcting the biases of traditional historians and materials which document the existence of phenomena (languages, religions, popular literary genres, social customs, etc.) that were completely overlooked -- or even suppressed -- by them. As examples of the vivid immediacy afforded by such materials, two texts from Dunhuang manuscripts S4400 -- a prayer by Cao Yanlu -- and S3877 -- a contract for the sale of a woman's son -- are edited and translated. The paper concludes by stressing that, because of the complexity and vast scope of Dunhuang and Turfan studies, international cooperation is essential.

 

 

Pulleyblank, Edward G.

"Early Contacts Between Indo-Europeans and Contact, International Review of Chinese Linguistics, Volume 1 number 1 1998
Abstract: For four or five thousand years prior to 2000 BCE, a variety of neolithic cultures developed in the territory of what used to be called China proper (excluding, that is, Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet). They interacted with one another, but mainly peacefully as far as we can tell. Then, around 2000 BCE, just about the traditional date of the founding of the first dynasty, the Xia, the bronze age begins in the Central Plain, culminating around 1200 in the fully identifiable remains, of the last capital or cult centre of its successor, Shang, at Anyang. By this time (and presumable several centuries earlier if we give any credence at all to later tradition) it is clear that imperialistic conquest has replaced peaceful interaction. Moreover, there are unmistakable signs of western importations -- wheat and barley as cereal crops and most notably the horse-drawn chariot. How and when did these and other possible or probable western contributions reach China? Were they mere add-ons to an already self-generated and fully functioning nascent state system or were they essential ingredients of that system? The evidence is still not sufficient to give a definite answer, but it seems very likely that a stimulus from the west played a significant role in inaugurating the Chinese bronze age. In the long run, however, the content of the civilization that grew out of it owed much more ot earlier indigenous cultural traditions.

 

Ringe, Donald

"Tocharians in Xinjiang: The Linguistic Evidence", Journal of Indo-European Studies, Fall/Winter 1995, Volume 23, Numbers 3 & 4, pp. 439-443
Abstract:

 

Sick, David H.

"Cattle-Theft and the Birth of Mithras: Another Look at Cumont's Vedic Parallel" Journal of Indo-European Studies, Fall/Winter 1996, Volume 24, Numbers 3 & 4, pp. 257-275
Abstract:

 

 

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