Chapter 11: An Afterword

And a really long afterword from Chloe: Now, the premise of this story is that a Chinese princess makes it to Western Europe in approximately 540 AD. Was that even possible? The answer is, I guess, “perhaps,” and here we go into history a little, and if you’re not interested, just skip over this.

I did do quite a lot of reading on the history of the Eurasian steppe, the “Steppe Route” between eastern Europe and China, as well as the more southerly “Silk Road,” and the great migrations of the 5th and 6th century, which saw whole peoples moving west, from the steppe north of China, and eventually into Europe, and some of those migrations were not short. The Ostrogoths and the Visigoths for example, migrated from southern Sweden into the Ukraine around 160AD, and established a kingdom north of the Black Sea during the 3rd and 4th centuries, when they were the most formidable military power north of the Danube. They built an empire stretching from the Black Sea to the Baltic, but were conquered by the Huns about 370, and then reappeared on the Danube about 80 years later. In 493, they established the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy, so while they were Germanic, they sure didn’t take the short route south, and the Visigoths went even further, establishing their own Kingdom in Spain and southern France. And now, back to the Chinese...

I’ll start with a really brief overview of early contacts between China and Europe, and the two land routes by which this occurred, the northern “Steppe Route” and the southern “Silk Road.” I like reading history but I’m no historian, and I was trying to summarize this, so I hope it’s not to confusing, but I did want to show that it was entirely possible, if not probable, for a chinese Princess to end up in the land of Beowulf.

I’ll pass on contacts by sea via south-east Asia and India, as they’re not relevant to this story, although they existed thousands of years ago, and there’s evidence of trade between Sumer, the Indus Valley civilizations and ancient China. The southern stretches of the Silk Road, from Khotan (Xinjiang) to Eastern China, were first used for jade (not silk), as long ago as 5000 BCE, and the overland Steppe Route across the northern steppes of Central Eurasia was in use long before the Silk Road.

Some remnants of what was probably Chinese silk dating from 1070 BCE have been found in Ancient Egypt. A burial near Stuttgart, Germany, dated to the 6th century BCE, was excavated and found to have not only Greek bronzes but also Chinese silks -- and how I wish that silk could talk! Similar animal-shaped pieces of art and wrestler motifs on belts have been found in Scythian grave sites stretching from the Black Sea region all the way to Warring States era archaeological sites in Inner Mongolia (at Aluchaideng) and Shaanxi (at Keshengzhuang) in China. One study shows European-specific mitochondrial DNA has been found at sites in China’s western-most Xinjiang Province, suggesting that Westerners may have settled, lived and died there before and during the time of the First Emperor.

Now what was the Steppe Route?

The Steppe Route was an ancient overland route through the Eurasian Steppe that was an active precursor of the Silk Road. Silk and horses were traded as key commodities; secondary trade included furs, weapons, musical instruments, precious stones (turquoise, lapis lazuli, agate, nephrite) and jewels. This route extended for approximately 10,000 km (6,200 mi). Trans-Eurasian trade through the Steppe Route precedes the conventional date for the origins of the Silk Road by at least two millennia and probably more.

The Steppe Route centers on the North Asian steppes and connects eastern Europe to north-eastern China. The Eurasian Steppe extends from the mouth of the Danube River to the Pacific Ocean, bounded on the north by the forests of Russia and Siberia, with no clear southern boundary, although the southern semi-deserts and deserts impede travel. With its continental climate and lack of rainfall, it’s not suitable for farming. The steppe is interrupted at three points by mountain ranges - the Ural mountains, the Altai mountains, and the Greater Khingan range; dividing the steppe into four segments that can be crossed by horsemen.

The land stretching alongside the Steppe route includes dry steppe, desert, mountains, oases, lakes, rivers and river deltas, lowland steppe, mountain steppe, and forest steppe regions. These climatic and geographical conditions encouraged a nomadic lifestyle, and fostered a military culture necessary to protect herds and to conquer new grazing territories. The specific geography of the steppe created an ecosystem capable of mixing critical development features, including the diffusion of modern humans, animal domestication and animal husbandry, spoke-wheeled chariot and cavalry warfare, early metal production (copper) and trade, Indo-European languages, and the political rise of nomadic civilizations.

By 2000 BCE the network of Steppe Route exchanges started to transition to the Silk Road. By the middle of this millennium, the “steppe route” cultures were well established. Slow moving groups were gradually replaced or enslaved by herdsmen from the steppes and semi-deserts. Nomads rode small horses and knew how to fight from horseback primarily with a bow, which was the distinctive weapon of the steppe.

Various artifacts, including glassware, excavated from tombs in Silla (in Korea) are similar to those found in the Mediterranean part of the Roman Empire, showing that exchange did take place between the two extremities of the Steppe road. The inter-relation of China with the steppe route resulted in the rapid progress of the Chinese civilization in the Yin (Shang 商) dynast, with the appearance of three major innovations most probably imported from the Eurasian steppe: wheeled transport, the horse, and metallurgy, all of which had a huge impact across the lands bordering the steppe.

The Hyksos, for example, whose invasion of Egypt led to the end of the Thirteenth Dynasty, were successful due to a number of military innovations from the steppe -- the horse and chariot, the composite bow and others, and their leadership is generally held to have contained Hurrian and Indo-European elements. In China, chariot warfare was likely introduced by the Tocharians, an Indo-European people who had settled in the Tarim Basin. There’s a lot more to it than that, but chariots were invented on the steppe, by Indo-Europeans, and they and the bow and arrow dominated warfare across the Steppe and the Middle East (and India, with the Aryan invasions) for centuries.

Common references across the Steppe Route can be traced from the Mediterranean to the Korean Peninsula, with similar techniques, styles, cultures, and religions, and even disease patterns -- and we know there was Chinese silk in Egypt circa 1000 BC, and in Germany circa 600 BC, and where one trace has been found, there were usually far more, given the perishability of textiles, so we can take it as given that there was some kind of trade route across the steppe at least that long ago.

And now, a quick look at the Silk Road, which would have been known to Princess Yuan Fan, although her journey to Europe was across the Steppe Route,

The Silk Road was a network of trade routes which connected the East to the West, and was central to the economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between these regions from the 2nd century BCE through to the 18th century. The Silk Road gets its name from the lucrative trade in silk carried out along its length, a trade which became rather more important during the Han dynasty in China (207 BCE--220 CE). The expansion of the Greek empire of Alexander the Great into Central Asia possibly led to the first direct contacts between Europe and China, the the Greek-ruled states expanding eastward, especially during the reign of Euthydemus (230--200 BCE), who extended his control to Sogdiana, with indications that this ruler may have led expeditions as far as Kashgar in Chinese Turkestan, leading to the first known direct contacts between China and the West around 200 BC. The Greek historian Strabo writes, “they extended their empire even as far as the Seres (China) and the Phryni.”

“We now have evidence that close contact existed between the First Emperor’s China and the West before the formal opening of the Silk Road. This is far earlier than we formerly thought,” Senior Archaeologist Li Xiuzhen, from the Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s Mausoleum Site Museum, has said. The Han envoy Zhang Qian, who served the Emperor Wu, of the Han dynasty was sent west to the Yuezhi (in Transoxiana). Between 138-125 BC, Zhang Qian traveled beyond the Tarim Basin to Ferghana, Yuezhi and the Bactrian state of Daxia, with its remnants of Greco-Bactrian rule, introducing the Chinese to the kingdoms of Central Asia, Hellenized Persia, India, and the Middle East and bringing back reports of the horses of Fergana. He also made reports on neighbouring countries that he did not visit, such as Anxi (Parthia), Tiaozhi (Mesopotamia), Shendu (the Indian subcontinent) and the Wusun

From 104 to 102 BC, Emperor Wu of Han waged war against the “Yuezhi” who controlled “Dayuan”, a Hellenized kingdom of Fergana established by Alexander the Great in 329 BC. Emperor Wu had wanted to buy horses from Dayuan for the wars against the Xiongnu. The soil in China lacked Selenium, a deficiency which contributed to muscular weakness and reduced growth in horses. Consequently, horses in China were too frail to support the weight of a Chinese soldier. The Chinese needed the superior horses that nomads bred on the Eurasian steppes and sent gold to Dayuan to pay for these horse. Dayuan reneged on the deal and refused, murdered one of the Han ambassadors, and confiscated the gold sent as payment. The Han sent an army that defeated Dayuan, installed a regime favorable to the Han, and won enough horses to later build a cavalry strong enough to defeat the Xiongnu in the Han--Xiongnu War. According to the “Houhanshu (the Book of the Later Han, penned by a Chinese historian during the fifth century and considered an authoritative record of the Han history between 25 and 220), between 5 and 10 diplomatic groups were dispatched annually by the Han court to Central Asia during this period to buy horses.

After winning the War of the Heavenly Horses and the Han--Xiongnu War, Chinese armies established themselves in Central Asia, initiating the Silk Route as a major avenue of international trade with the sophisticated urban civilizations of Ferghana, Bactria, and the Parthian Empire. Past its inception, the Chinese continued to dominate the Silk Roads, a process which was accelerated when “China snatched control of the Silk Road from the Hsiung-nu” and the Chinese general Cheng Ki “installed himself as protector of the Tarim at Wu-lei, situated between Kara Shahr and Kucha.”

More Chinese embassies were dispatched to Anxi (Parthia), Yancai (who later joined the Alans), Lijian (Syria under the Greek Seleucids), Tiaozhi (Mesopotamia), and Tianzhu (northwestern India). These connections marked the beginning of the Silk Road trade network that extended to the Roman Empire. The Chinese campaigned in Central Asia on several occasions, and direct encounters between Han troops and Roman legionaries (probably captured or recruited as mercenaries by the Xiong Nu) are recorded, particularly in the 36 BCE battle of Sogdiana. It has been suggested that the Chinese crossbow was transmitted to the Roman world on such occasions.

Also, [a] Han expedition into Central Asia, west of the Jaxartes River, apparently encountered and defeated a contingent of Roman legionaries. The Romans may have been part of Antony’s army invading Parthia. Sogdiana (modern Bukhara), east of the Oxus River, on the Polytimetus River, was apparently the most easterly penetration ever made by Roman forces in Asia. The Chinese victory appears to have been due to their crossbows, whose bolts and darts seem easily to have penetrated Roman shields and armor.

According to the writings of Roman historian Dio Cassius, Romans saw high-quality silk for the first time in 53 BCE, in the form of Parthian banners unfurled before the Roman defeat at the battle of Carrhae. The Roman historian Florus also describes the visit of numerous envoys, which included Seres(China), to the first Roman Emperor Augustus, who reigned between 27 BCE and 14 CE: “Even the rest of the nations of the world which were not subject to the imperial sway were sensible of its grandeur, and looked with reverence to the Roman people, the great conqueror of nations. Thus even Scythians and Sarmatians sent envoys to seek the friendship of Rome. Nay, the Seres came likewise, and the Indians who dwelt beneath the vertical sun, bringing presents of precious stones and pearls and elephants, but thinking all of less moment than the vastness of the journey which they had undertaken, and which they said had occupied four years. In truth it needed but to look at their complexion to see that they were people of another world than ours.”

Soon after the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BCE, regular communications and trade between China, Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe blossomed on an unprecedented scale. The Roman Empire inherited eastern trade routes that were part of the Silk Road from the earlier Hellenistic powers and the Arabs. With control of these trade routes, citizens of the Roman Empire received new luxuries and greater prosperity for the Empire as a whole. The Roman-style glassware discovered in the archeological sites of Gyeongju, capital of the Silla kingdom (Korea) showed that Roman artifacts were traded as far as the Korean peninsula.

The Greco-Roman trade with India started by Eudoxus of Cyzicus in 130 BCE continued to increase, and according to Strabo (II .5.12), by the time of Augustus, up to 120 ships were setting sail every year from Myos Hormos in Roman Egypt to India. The Roman Empire connected with the Central Asian Silk Road through their ports in Barygaza (known today as Bharuch) and Barbaricum (known today as the city of Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan) and continued along the western coast of India. An ancient Greek “travel guide” to this Indian Ocean trade route, Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, was written in 60 CE, and while this sea route is incidental to my story, it shows that the Romans and the Chinese knew of each other, and had direct, if infrequent, contacts.

The travelling party of Maës Titianus penetrated farthest east along the Silk Road from the Mediterranean world, probably with the aim of regularising contacts and reducing the role of middlemen, during one of the lulls in Rome’s intermittent wars with Parthia, which repeatedly obstructed movement along the Silk Road. Intercontinental trade and communication became regular, organised, and protected by the “Great Powers”. Intense trade with the Roman Empire soon followed, confirmed by the Roman craze for Chinese silk (supplied through the Parthians), even though the Romans thought silk was obtained from trees. This belief was affirmed by Seneca the Younger in his Phaedra and by Virgil in his Georgics. Notably, Pliny the Elder knew better. Speaking of the bombyx or silk moth, he wrote in his Natural Histories, “They weave webs, like spiders, that become a luxurious clothing material for women, called silk.” The Romans traded spices, glassware, perfumes, for silk.

Roman artisans began to replace yarn with valuable plain silk cloths from China and the Silla Kingdom in Gyeongju, Korea. Chinese wealth grew as they delivered silk and other luxury goods to the Roman Empire, whose wealthy women admired their beauty. The Roman Senate issued, in vain, several edicts to prohibit the wearing of silk, on economic and moral grounds: the import of Chinese silk caused a huge outflow of gold, and silk clothes were considered decadent and immoral. “I can see clothes of silk, if materials that do not hide the body, nor even one’s decency, can be called clothes ... Wretched flocks of maids labor so that the adulteress may be visible through her thin dress, so that her husband has no more acquaintance than any outsider or foreigner with his wife’s body...”

The Han army regularly policed the silk road route against nomadic bandit forces, generally identified as Xiongnu. Han general Ban Chao (mentioned briefly in my story) led an army of 70,000 mounted infantry and light cavalry troops in the 1st century AD to secure the trade routes reaching far west to the Tarim basin. Ban Chao expanded his conquests across the Pamirs to the shores of the Caspian Sea and the borders of Parthia. It was from here that the Han general dispatched an envoy, Gan Ying, to Daqin (Rome). The Silk Road essentially came into being from the 1st century BCE, following these efforts by China to consolidate a road to the Western world and India, both through direct settlements in the area of the Tarim Basin and diplomatic relations with the countries of the Dayuan, Parthians and Bactrians further west.

Chinese historians have also recorded more visits by people thought to have been emissaries from the Roman Empire during the Second and Third Centuries AD. The earliest recorded such official contact between China and ancient Rome was in A.D. 166 when, according to a Chinese account, a Roman envoy, possibly sent by Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, arrived in China. A record of this meeting survives. There were several other direct contacts with Rome over the centuries, but with the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire, and its demand for sophisticated Asian products, trade with China crumbled in the West around the 5th century, although some later contacts were made by the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium).