How is it possible that Rome and China were unaware of one another when Rome was trading with India?
>>18492747Rome knew where the silk they were paying for was coming from. China was aware that there was another Empire on the other side of Eurasia, even if the actual Roman silver generally remained with the middle-men.
hmm
>>18492747Because Romans themselves never reached India. They couldn't go around Cape of Good Hope because their square, latin-style sails didn't allow for tacking into the wind and the galleys with oars weren't strong enough to weather the passage anyway. On the other side of Africa and in the near east they traded with traders who had come there from India.
>>18493443Sure, but over a millennium nobody told them about a Rome of the orient?
>>18492747They both knew of eachothers existence basically immediately. It was just irrelevant information about a country so far away that even news would take months/years to receive. The romans had merchant outposts in India and traded into Vietnam/okinawa, of course they knew of China. But so what?
>>18493458so they didn't know of china
>>18493504as much as you dont know how to read
Its like how you are aware of that really good restaurant people mention across the entire metroplex but you cant be assed to go all the way there to see for yourself.
>>18492747Phoenician middle-men. The Chinese at the time wrote a lot about a disruptive reddish purple pigment showing up about the same time, afraid it would out-peacock the royal crimson. Both sides were kept ignorant while Phoenician Hypertraders who controlled the silk road thanks to being dispersed by the Neo-Babylonians who sent them far and wide away from the shore.
>>18493516I accept your concession.
>>18492747Rome and China knew of each other... they traded very indirectly through the intermediate regions. A Roman would have to cross through all of Parthia and then cross all of India to get to China. Which was an unfathomably long distance. It's very likely no man every did it during the early Roman Empire. It would be asking a modern American if they know about Uzbekistan. We know OF it, but it's so damn far away, geographically and culturally, that it's mostly an irrelevancy to us.
>>18492747Even today there are no direct flights between India and China
>>18492747>Ancient Chinese historians recorded several alleged Roman emissaries to China. The first one on record, supposedly either from the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius or from his adopted son Marcus Aurelius, arrived in 166 AD. Others are recorded as arriving in 226 and 284 AD, followed by a long hiatus until the first recorded Byzantine embassy in 643 AD.
really makes you think
>>18492747Jews.
