Origins of the Silk Road
43:04 Share

Thanks for listening to The Ancients. You can get all History Hit podcasts ad-free, early access and bonus episodes, along with hundreds of original history documentaries by subscribing. Head over to historyhit.com slash subscribe.

This season, Instacart has your back to school. As in, they've got your back to school lunch favorites like snack packs and fresh fruit. And they've got your back to school supplies like backpacks, binders, and pencils. And they've got your back when your kid casually tells you they have a huge school project due tomorrow. Let's face it, we were all that kid.

So first, call your parents to say I'm sorry and then download the Instacart app to get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes all school year long. Get a $0 delivery fee with your first three orders while supplies last. Minimum $10 in order. Additional terms apply. The Great Steps

Stretching from China to the Ukraine, this vast region of mountains, grasslands and rivers is often associated with nomadic civilizations of ancient history. Think the Huns, the Scythians and the Xiongnu, for instance. But that is oversimplifying their story. Because more than 5,000 years ago, people living in Central Asia, places like Kazakhstan today, were central in connecting East with West. They were the glue which helped build the first global network back in the Bronze Age.

We can call this the origins of the famous Silk Roads. However, silk was not the main commodity being exchanged at that time. It was metals. Living in lands rich in metal deposits, Central Asian communities became the suppliers of precious metals such as copper and tin to great Bronze Age dynasties both in the East and in the West. They were also spreading technologies too. Think chariots, for instance.

And so in this episode, we'll be delving into the story of these ancient Central Asian communities, their connections and their metalworking. And even how this massive metalworking industry on the Great Step may well have led to environment destruction and climate change. That is all to come. Now our guest today is Dr. Miljana Radivojevic from University College London.

Mianna is a leading expert on Bronze Age metallurgy in The Great Step and is also about to embark on a groundbreaking research project on this very topic in Central Asia. So I was delighted to get the chance to interview her at London's Spotify studio all about these origins of the Silk Road before she left. I really do hope you enjoy, and here's Mianna.

Miljana, it is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast today. I'm really honoured. And to do it in this amazing Spotify studio, to go to Central Asia and some 4,000 years ago, the origins of the Silk Road that we sometimes always think about in medieval times, arguably, like it all begins this great global exchange network. It begins back in prehistory in the Bronze Age. Totally. It is the Bronze Age all the way through. We have, for the first time, these communities experiencing

exchanging knowledge and exchanging commodities from as early as 3500 BC actually so we have them being very mobile from early Bronze Age so-called Yamnaya culture though it's like a

complex of cultures. And then we have towards the second millennium BC, the generation, if I may call it, of so-called Andronova cultural complex, which is a cultural complex of many communities living between the Urals and the Altai Mountains, put it very roughly.

And they are the ones who were actually trading and exchanging metals with all these big societies we hear about, the sedentary empires, the Shang Dynasty, the Indus Valley civilization, the Mesopotamia, you know, Mediterranean and so on, Egypt, if you like. And they were, I wouldn't say single-handedly, but they were definitely feeding the emerging political leadership at the time with a trade of metals, especially copper and tin.

So this is really interesting to highlight straight away. It's not, I say, those great kind of Bronze Age empires, whether it's the Shang Dynasty in China or Egypt in the Eastern Mediterranean, places like that. It is these smaller communities, these step communities in Central Eurasia that really, they fuel the creation of this first global exchange network. Yes. I mean, I would argue that that network was possibly called the Bronze Road at the time. But

It's just one of those things every academic would like, you know, to make their own whatever coinage at the time. I'm quite happy to keep up with the Silk Road. As long as we are aware that we are not only talking about exchanging commodities, which is what Silk Road was mainly about.

These connectivities across Eurasia, they were uniting Atlantic and Pacific for the first time ever in human history. And they were moving these fundamental technologies of making metals also

horse domestication, also inventing chariots. There's a lot of mobilities happening at the time. So it is not just the commodities. It is basically life skills, if you like. And they were uniting the Atlantic and Pacific in the way that no one did that before, because we have for the first time bronze artefacts reaching both shores looking very similar.

This is down to the Bronze Age pastoralist societies in the steppes. You mentioned chariots on going there, and we'll certainly revisit the word chariots and how that comes into this later on during the podcast episode. But a few big background questions, first of all, Miljana. And the first one is, actually, when we say the word Silk Road, I mean, no such thing as a silly question. What do we mean when we say the word Silk Road or Silk Roads?

Well, it's a term used to describe this trading of commodities starting from high dynasty China, well into the Arabian Peninsula and further towards Europe. You have development of those routes well into Venice. We all heard about Marco Polo and so on. So it is a historical term. We can use it. It is good enough.

But just so that we know that Silk Road is not just related to agrarian empires and sedentary societies and people trading and exchanging goods in big bazaars in ancient cities. The big game was happening with the steppe nomads. And it is only our perception that we see societies that are, well,

distinctively stratified to be civilized, that we could not before comprehend that society such as steppe nomads or steppe pastoralists would be a civilization or would be complex. But they are complex but in a different way, in a more sort of a horizontal, you know, stratification way where they connect

through, I don't know, different institutions of belief or institutions of trade and exchange, but they have a different way of living their lives, which doesn't mean that they are not civilized. And in that sense, I would like to clarify that Silk Road is a term that is all-inclusive in all kinds of civilizations that we had at the time. And we're going to be focusing in largely on these civilizations on the steppe and the great steppe. And also then, what do we mean? How big an area are we talking about when we mention the word steppe?

Conventionally, 8 million square kilometres. Okay, yeah, quite tricky. Exactly. So it's between the steppes in Ukraine.

or from the Pontic steppes, I would say, even all the way to Xinjiang. Then kind of the border to the south would be, you know, Tianshan Mountains and to the north these tundras and taigas of Siberia. But that's kind of the inner Eurasia, if you like. And when we think about the steppes, we usually think about the grasses.

While most of the steppes are grasses, it's got many ecotones. It's got forests, it's got mountains, it's got highlands and lowlands. So all of that is a steppe. It's just a misconception that it's just going to be just one straight meadow, 8 million square kilometers thick.

And also, when we're exploring the geography and the topography of this area, as we're going to be talking about metals as this podcast goes on, how rich in metal deposits is this area of Eurasia? Well, it is very rich. But when we think about the ancient mines in the Bronze Age, and we have for comparison the ancient mining systems in the Bronze Age in Europe,

and we compare to one of the ancient mining systems in the steppes, which is Kargalí in South Russia, Kargalí is 10 times the production efficiency of the biggest mining system in Europe, which is in Mitteberg in Austria. So that is one of six, seven systems in the steppes. So we are talking about millions and millions and millions of tons of metals being produced. And I'm not even touching on the subject of China, because China is going to be 100 times that.

Right, because what we have in China, they completely transformed the bronze metallurgy once it reaches the knowledge of metal making. They have different way of thinking about what to make from metals. They made these large ding bronzes. They have objects which are like up to 10 tons and they all toss it in the funerals or like funerary pits and so on. It's a completely different story. But I want to say that

What is left over from the Shang Dynasty is much more than what is left over in terms of metals from the steppes. But speaking of these times when the metallurgy spreads, it is massive production efficiency at a time. And we are also thinking that that sort of production scale might have impacted the carbon emission peaks that we see just around the beginning of the Bronze Age, based on the ice coring

from the North Pole. It is yet to be investigated, but it is very much correlated. Whether it's connected to each other is something to be seen, but it would be a no-brainer because we cannot explain these peaks in carbon emission otherwise.

than those 10-15 ppm that I've seen in the records, but metal production. I certainly want to explore this in more depth, metal production by these people some 4,000 years ago and how big and important it was for the creation of this first global network, as it were. But I'd like to also ask a bit about the people themselves. What kind of lifestyle did they have, the people who lived in the steppe, let's say roughly 4,000 years ago? What do we know about that?

That's a great question because when we think about all this connectedness and we know that they were supplying all these metals and all the goodies to the sedentary and rich people in outer Eurasia, you would imagine they lived like a very cozy life. There was a villa or something. They lived like in little huts, which were sort of a semi-dug-in, dirty, if you like, very simple pottery that I've seen. In terms of subsistence economy, they were herding goats, sheep,

sheep and cattle, depending on where in the steppes you are. And there were pastoralist societies, which means that had these transhuman activities in their lifestyles, taking the livestock during the summers to the highlands, to graze, and then in the winter staying in the lowlands. So that's...

I'm not saying they're all living the same lives because looking at the steps and the size that we are working on, some of them are purely methodological. They could be seasonal, but they are just workshops. I don't even know where they slept. They possibly slept next to the furnace.

Because I don't have any dwellings of these metallurgists. I only have lots and lots of metallurgical workshops, like in the site of Taldisay in central Kazakhstan, for instance, that my student is working on right now. We'll get to Taldisay in a bit. But you mentioned, I mean, the word nomadic comes up time and time again when we talk about the Great Steppe and we talk about prehistory. You get later the Huns and then Genghis Khan and so on. Can we call these pastoralists who went from place...

to place? Can we call them nomadic? Conditionally, it is easier to call them nomadic. But when we think about nomadic, we think about people with irregular movements. And these pastoralist movements are more regular. But speaking about the past, we are not always sure what was regular and what was irregular. So

Nomadic pastoralism should be okay, but it's just one of those things, just to bear in mind that it's about the regularity of the movement. And they're going from place to place and all across the steppe. And of course, does this in turn also kind of influence...

exchange and connections between these people and nearby more sedentary civilizations, let's say like the Shang Dynasty in China and places further west in Mesopotamia. Does this movement, does that help start to kind of influence and inspire these connections between these societies all across Eurasia? Yeah, they are the glue, definitely, of these early empires and states because they're the ones with higher mobility

connecting the dots, if you like. I think this is the best way actually to explain in terms of networks. When we think about connectedness of the Silk Roads between these sedentary societies, we pay a lot of attention to the nodes, nodes being these cities, fortresses and so on. While when we turn the story a little bit to the north and we think about connectedness in the steppes, it is all about the edges. It's all about these roots of connectedness.

I wouldn't think that they knew they were part of something as big as the Silk Roads, right? But we see all sorts of materials ending in like little campsites from far away. The site I'm working on in the region of Semi-Rece with my colleague Michael Fasciatti, it's called Begaş. It's

It's got metals coming from Northwest India, and it's a small village just at the foothills of the Jungar Mountains. So, you know, in what world would a goat herder from like the Jungar Mountains access the whatever metals from Northwest India? It just tells you about the small scale connectedness, these

small-scale networks that basically are millions, there are millions and millions of those, but looking from outer space, they look like a Silk Road, but they're just as dense as any other connectedness you can imagine between different people, societies, regions, and so on. How do all these millions combine together? It's absolutely fascinating. Well, you mentioned the name Big Ash there, and I kind of like to use that, and other sites that you've worked on too, as we kind of explain the origins of

the Silk Road. What's some of our earliest evidence for trade and exchange across Eurasia? What do we know? Officially, if I may put it that way, we would think of that as a sort of evidence that comes from the East and evidence that comes from the West coming to one side.

And we have the site of Begash where in the burial they found seeds of millet, wheat and barley. Millet is known to come from China, barley and wheat from Southwest Asia. So that's like a contact 4,500 years ago.

But then we have something earlier from Tongtian Cave in northwest India, which is 5,200 years ago, I think. Same sort of a thing. But that was a bouquet. It wasn't just that they were throwing millet and wheat just around the site. It was deposited in the burial. So just thinking about the concept of my colleague called seeds for the soul. Those were definitely seeds for the soul at that time.

I remember when popular media outlets announced the discovery of these grains a few years ago. It wasn't the Silk Road, this was the Grain Road at the time. That's extraordinary that these were some of the earliest commodities that we have evidence for being exchanged over these huge distances through these steppe societies.

But there were lots of connectedness happening in the Paleolithic times. And we know about the movement of the hominin species anyway, and so on. But yes, speaking archaeological about this sound evidence of the contact from the East and the West, the grains would be an interesting bet. But also we know that these technologies move along the, especially along the inner Asian mountain corridors.

We know that people move along those corridors. There's massive ancient DNA studies done recently to show the mobility of this Yamnaya culture from around the southern Urals, Caucasus, that sort of Pontic steppe region, towards the east and the west. But we also have these movements later in the second millennium BC along the inner Asia mountain corridors into India.

So, interesting topics to dwell on. And I know there's a lot of research coming soon to clarify what these movements mean. And the project that I'm just going to do for the next five years is going to be mostly about what did it mean? All these movements, all these migrations, what kind of changes we could see happening

happening in those societies, in the settlements that we are investigating, seen through the technology. And why technology is because technology is an extended phenotype of human behavior. So whatever they were doing, wherever they were going, inspiration they were getting, I can see that in technology. And we have a massive, like abundant material, hundreds of thousands of kilograms of slugs and, you know, remains of furnaces and pair that with like a

thousands of artifacts and so on so it's a lot to do but it is exciting just knowing how amazing these societies were well let's explore this kind of metalworking in the step now that i know you do so much work around and i have first of all in my notes we're kind of touching it already but

Explain what this is, the word bronzization. Bronzization. Bronzization. That seems to grip the whole of Eurasia some 4,000 years ago. Now, what is this? It's a beautiful concept coined by my dear colleague Helen Van Kilder back in 2016. She wanted to have a term for these united shores of Atlantic and Pacific that, you know, cut also through Mediterranean and northern parts of Africa.

where we see that all societies were trading and making bronzes. The main difference between North and the South of these societies, I think North being inner Eurasia and South being outer Eurasia, is that the inner Eurasian societies were producing metal and trading while the outer Eurasian societies were using mostly. Think of Mesopotamia. Go to the British Museum and Babylon Room. You're going to see the Royal Cemetery where they are loaded with bronzes.

There's no tin resources in Mesopotamia. The tin is reaching them through Afghanistan. That is through the Inner Asia mountain corridor. And we know isotopically that a lot of tin is coming from Central Asia into these societies. And recently there was a paper claiming that even the Uluburun shipbuilding

a shipwreck, some of the metals came from that region. So we're talking about a really massive expansion of the trade and exchange networks from peasants living in small huts in the steppes. And what sorts of metals are these? You mentioned tin there, but what are the main metals that we can see from the archaeological research so far that these steppe peasants are extracting from these mines in Eurasia in the steppes?

Prior to the second millennium BC, we have agricultural tools. But then in the second millennium BC, sadly to say, there are killing tools. We have a lot of arrowheads, axes. We also have these super fashionable types of metals called sematurbino, which come especially from the Altai Mountains. It's like the Burberry of the metals or like the Tesla of the metals. So they are having a particular proportion of tin to metal.

to copper. It is 10% tin, 90% copper, but they have these beautifully cast handles with mythical creatures of lions and panthers and warriors and so on. And these knives, which were beautifully crafted, are only worn by the warriors. We find them in burials like a

crossed the steppe from Altai into the Urals, into the Caucasus. So it's like a fashion or like an exceptional craftsmanship at the time that we have

So we have tools for conquering other societies. And they're always themselves. So you've got tin, and I guess there's some massive copper mines as well. And I just kind of want to get into the everyday logistics of these people as they are extracting these resources. How should we envisage one of these mines in Central Asia? Because you mentioned right at the start, though, these are massive industries that emerge in Central Asia at this time. But how massive should we be thinking? So let's say if the production capacity of...

The Bronze Age mine in Europe was 15,000 metric tons during this bronzization period. I should have mentioned it's between 1600 and 1200 BC, these 400 years. Within the same kind of a boom phase, we have 150,000 metric tons of copper from Urals. That's like 10 times more. And it is estimated that there should be around a million metric tons in the Jaskazgan region, which is in central Kazakhstan.

So the way they looked, from what we know from Kargalí, is that there are 35,000 shafts, 500 square kilometers of the whole region.

There are around 30 different sites and these sites are mostly metallurgical sites. So those are specialist communities who are only smelting and making metal. And we have them obviously trading metal for cattle. So they don't keep the cattle, but they eat the cattle, right? They eat the meat. And we see a lot of bones present on the sites, but no signs of herding.

livestock. So in that sense, that's how I would imagine them. Maybe they were doing it seasonally, that they would be gathering and doing like six months per year, just melting metal and exchanging for some other goods. Though some of them could have been permanent. I'm yet to investigate that part.

Hey folks, since you're a fan of history, you clearly want to understand how we've ended up with the world that we have. Well, I'd like to tell you about my show. It's called Dan Snow's History Hit. And on that show, you get a daily dose of history and the stories that really explain just about everything that's ever happened. If you want to know the origin stories of the cities we inhabit, what's in our kitchen cupboards, why we've always been drawn to dictators, the deep history that explains what's going on, for example, in the Middle East, well, we've got you covered.

And if you'd rather be regaled with dramatic tales of powerful empires, we do that too. Get a little bit smarter every day with Dan Snow's History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

This season, Instacart has your back to school. As in, they've got your back to school lunch favorites like snack packs and fresh fruit. And they've got your back to school supplies like backpacks, binders, and pencils. And they've got your back when your kid casually tells you they have a huge school project due tomorrow. Let's face it, we were all that kid.

So first, call your parents to say I'm sorry, and then download the Instacart app to get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes all school year long. Get a $0 delivery fee with your first three orders while supplies last. Minimum $10 in order. Additional terms apply.

There was a time when summer surprised us, when galleries opened minds, adventures opened hearts, and we all remained open to whatever the day might offer. It was a time to enjoy. It was summer, this summer, at Biltmore. Plan your visit or overnight stay so you can enjoy the marvelous works of Chihuly and savor the season. Reserve now at Biltmore.com. ♪

Do we know much about the smelting process itself? So, of course, you've extracted the ores. I mean, were there kind of these industries, these workshops almost nearby? And do we know about the process, about how they kind of made it from the raw material into, let's say, a tin bronze object or a copper object, something like that? Yeah, that's a great question. We know that now from the excavations of Taldisai and the research going on with my PhD student, Ilaria Calgaro, what we learn is that they have these innovative furnaces.

completely unseen before, like deep shut furnaces with some long channels that are then fired from the other end. And I think they're using the differential pressure where they kind of fire the channel, the hot air enters like to the channel

into the furnace and then they fire the furnace and then some of the fumes can kind of go the other way. Why is it important? It's because they are smelting the sulfur-rich copper ores and they don't want to inhale the sulfur. So we assume that the sulfur was actually in that way taken out from the kind of space where they were smelting.

Given the size of these deep-shut furnaces, they could produce anything in the range from 600-700 to 800 kilograms of metal in one go. So that's massive, and we see them doing that for at least 400 years continuously in the site of Tal Disai with this one recipe, one principle of smelting.

And Tal Disai is just one of many sites in the region of central Kazakhstan, in the Jaskazgan region, that we see existing at the time. I need to say that Jaskazgan is currently a modern mining region, so we wouldn't have any ancient traces of mining because they would have been destroyed by now. But we can use provenance analysis, say, take the copper ores from Jaskazgan and compare them with what we find in Tal Disai and make a clear connection, which there is a clear connection, we know that.

It's amazing to see those remains of those workshops and 4,000 years later to deduce this. You mentioned they're using that one recipe. Elsewhere in the steppe, do we know if different groups used almost different recipes to produce their own types of metals?

Yes, but a little bit earlier we have using different types of ores. I mean, it depends on where we are talking about. Like in the Middle Bronze Age, these furnaces were a little bit smaller, but they still had this deep shaft. In the Late Bronze Age, they become this kind of more adapted for large-scale smelting.

I have to say that some of the sites actually only have traded items. So in the site of Begash, it's just a traded item. They don't smelt. In the site of Dali, they smelt but like in the backyard, right? It's not like a large scale. So I don't expect for everyone to be doing metallurgy.

But I can see that there is a good specialization that, you know, some of them living closer to the mines will be specializing and will be kind of scaling up their activities in such a way. While the others will be, well, really just keeping goats and sheep. And then, you know, the exchange will be happening.

between them. But there is not one answer and there is not one story about them. But what I can tell you is that that sort of a scale, the innovative approaches to furnace building, the production capacity and the efficiency that we see at the time is really unparalleled. And then we have China, which is not even part of this story, which takes everything to a completely different level.

It's such high-level technological knowledge by these step nomads, almost, if we can use that term. And it's absolutely fascinating to think about how – I'm exaggerating a bit, but it almost feels like a Bronze Age industrial revolution in that area of the world and how big an industry it becomes. I mean –

We have that there and we have these created products, whether it's tin, whether it's copper, whether it's tin bronze. What types of artefacts created in this era of the world become incredibly popular with those Bronze Age sedentary civilisations that we so often think of, such as those in Mesopotamia, in Egypt or in the Shang Dynasty? Are there any particular metals produced

in Central Asia that are really sought after. I would say when it comes to the trade with the South, that they could have been raw materials then to be cast for their own needs. But when it comes to more kind of a horizontal trade and exchange, these very distinctive spearheads could have been popular because of their dynamics or because of...

the team content and whatever, but we have halberds, axes, spearheads, and this kind of horizontal line of exchange. But for everything else, I think it was down to the preferences of those who were purchasing the metals. I mean, they could easily just recast

in their own right and produce whatever they wanted. But it's usually axes and chisels and all that sort of insignia, if you like, of power at the time, but also using for practical purposes. The reason I ask is if it seems like it's such a massive industry in the Bronze Age central step at that time, and obviously there seems to be this high demand for it. I mean, I ask because of that, but also then as a side product, before we started recording, we were also kind of talking about something you wanted to mention, which was almost the classification

the climate impact that this must have. So if you have all of these workshops working your way, creating these materials, and then of course you're exchanging raw materials too.

But what do we know about that and how this affects the climate almost some 4,000 years ago? That's another 2 million euros question. I'm quite happy I've been granted enough funds to explore that a little bit more in detail. But what I can tell you is that judging by what we know thus far, there are many ways in which carbon enters the environment and the atmosphere.

something from the soil, from the sea and so on. But there is an unaccounted quantity of carbon, I think I mentioned 10 to 15 ppm, that we find in ice cores that we don't know where it comes from. My best bet is that it comes from metal production.

But we had to explore that by getting the pollen cores from the lakes nearby the big mining centers and then exploring and counting for the micro charcoal. So looking at that sort of presence of micro charcoal in the environment and then sampling around the furnaces.

any sort of seeds and phytoliths and micro charcoal and macro charcoal and whatever we can find to look at the species and then try to reconstruct the environment and then use like different sorts of evidence to see how much of deforestation was actually taking place because mind you if we are talking about millions of tons of copper produced

at the time, and definitely tin, though we have less evidence for tin, I have to say, we need fuel for that. So the amount of fuel needed for that sort of production does not match what we see in terms of the environment in the steppes. It's mostly grasslands, right? But where is the forest that they used? So the idea is, and it's not my idea, it's by this really prominent scholar who worked in Kargalí, Evgeny Chernik, that this

These societies must have collapsed, and they do collapse by the end of the second millennium BC, because they exhausted all resources for fuels. So the one thing could be, one option is that they maybe imported fuels, which is less likely, but who knows. But then another option is that they combined whatever wood they could find with dung.

Dung is even now used in Mongolia or in Kazakhstan for cooking temperatures, right? To cook as a fuel, but you wouldn't have dung as a sole fuel to maintain the temperatures in excess of 1,100 degrees, which is why we need both.

There is a way scientifically to show that by looking at the types of phytoliths that we find around the furnaces, which is what we are going to do in these next five years. But it is an interesting hypothesis to see whether they really were so reckless at the time that they just completely destroyed the environment to the point where they couldn't just

survive with that sort of a branch of subsistence economy that they establish. It was an economy that was keeping them alive in different ways. Because you mentioned the word 'collapse' there, so could this hypothesis then potentially be linked to this so-called Bronze Age collapse that happens at the end of the second millennium BC in the Near Eastern world? Yeah, it's a great topic. Great questions.

There is something happening around 1200 BC across the whole of Eurasia. I cannot say definitely if there was just one reason, right?

Climate could have somehow impacted some parts of the world because we have kind of the increased aridity in the steppes and then we have different life ways emerging by the end of the Bronze Age, early Iron Age. We have Scythian tribes coming to the fore of historical evidence. But when it comes to the other places, I have to say,

In Europe, there are combinations of factors. It's like different societies collapsing for different reasons. And I'll just say, if you're interested in the topic, just keep your eyes open on this space. I have to say, you put me on the spot because there's not a simple answer. Fair enough. It is always more complicated, those things. I remember talking to Eric Klein recently about it as well, and he highlighted all those different factors. But it's interesting to kind of suggest that perhaps these step communities...

in central Eurasia also potentially played a role with it, with exhausting those resources for these metal productions. It is so mind-blowing to think how important these communities are in creating these metals that circulate across Eurasia.

But of course, you also mentioned earlier how in China things are taken almost to another level. Should we also imagine these groups of steppe communities, these steppe nomads in the second millennium BC, they are spreading metals like tin bronze and copper alloys and so on. Do we see evidence that they are importing, let's say, metals like bronze from what is today Europe?

and also kind of then seeing those exchange and go further east and then vice versa. Do we also see them very much as ferrying metals across the whole Eurasian continent too? Like a proper merchant. Judging by the analysis, what we do, we do trace element analysis and different sorts of providence analysis analysis.

And we have around, say, combined 120,000 analyses from Moscow solely, 3,000 more analyses from other labs, you know, combined. It's of artifacts and they're all from the steppes. That's like for the Bronze Age steppes. I wouldn't dismiss...

possibility of any metals coming from Europe to China via the steppes, but there's nothing alike in the analysis. If anything, we can see that in the Asia Mountain Corridor, where we have also lots of tin resources, play this role of metal coming from the south or raw metal coming from the south into the steppes, but South Central Asia into Central Asia. I'm not thinking like Indus Valley or something.

So yes, in that sense, but it is important to kind of think about what the Chinese, the societies at the time, is that they reinvented the technology. They did it completely their own way. And what they make first, bells. They use metal for...

harmonics, for frequency, for tonality, you know, for entering the tempos where you can just, you know, play the bells for a certain music or whatever. It's a completely different way of perceiving metallurgy.

Which is why I'm so impressed by what the Chinese societies do at the time. And there was the old debate where because of this really impressive metalwork we see in the Bronze Age China, that Chinese metallurgy is independent or was independent. But it has been shown that the technology and the ideas and the knowledge comes from the steppes, comes from the pastoral societies, but they get transformed.

by the Chinese Bronze Age society in terms of what they make and how they perceive and the symbolism and so on. But again, it's a completely different topic, not so in the focus right now, but to know that the steppe nomads had a crucial role in bringing that into China is important to spell out. Very important too, and especially as we kind of highlight, as you mentioned, the Bronze Roads some 4,000 years ago. Before we started talking, we also mentioned these words,

"The Great Game" and "The Bronze Age Great Game". Now, could you please explain what we mean by that and what you mean by that when we use this language to explain what this, almost like the origins of the first global exchange network was? I use that as a sort of a play of words. I'm not a historian, but I'm aware very well of the great game so-called historically played between the British Empire and the Russian Empire.

back in the 1980s, 19th century. So we have these famous images of the lion and the bear. But

Why I mention that is because also the Central Asian communities were very important in all these diplomatic struggles between the two empires. And I could see that sort of being transferred back in time into the Bronze Age. You know, whatever was happening, there were lots of tensions between different empires. If you think that on one end at some point, you know, you would have

these mighty societies of the Mediterranean and Shang Dynasty and the Indus Valley and Egypt and so on, and you have things in between. And in some way, these Silk Roads, we can just call them just broadly Silk Roads as a way of connectedness throughout Eurasia, are being kind of reclaimed with this new Silk Roads initiative, with the Bronson and Belt and Road initiative.

where all these routes of trade and exchange and even cutting through the sides of the Bronze Age communities kind of are being reclaimed with a railway, like with the new roads being built. I think it's kind of a pause at the time, not easy to just enter some spaces given the current political situation, but the idea is there. It is to connect the East and the West through the steps, kind of through the forgotten routes.

Because, you know, once the maritime Silk Roads kicked in, these terrestrial roots were forgotten historically, but not really forgotten because they continue to live, but just less prominently in historical records.

We are very near the end, but we have focused on this exchange and spreading of metals through these societies to the East and West and South and so on some 4,000 years ago. It's not just metals that are spread, though. What other items do these steppe peoples in Central Eurasia help spread across?

across the continents? I think about food all the time. It is one of the ways, it's just different recipes and those are the food ways. The seeds of the fruits that we use today are actually coming from Central Asia.

There were projects by other colleagues also who worked on these food ways and food globalization that actually happens at the same time as this bronzization around the 1600 BC. So we have many globalization projects happening across the steppes, and one of the ways is definitely the food. So it's the seeds, but it's also the cooking practices.

So they kind of, you know, keep moving back and forth and you see the slow penetration both ways, you know, while, you know, some are roasting, the other one are cooking or boiling and, you know, different ways of kind of preparing food. That's one of the ways to think about this bronzization time. Also chariots, we have them being invented, I mean, invented, yes, in central Kazakhstan, especially because we have domestication of horses just around the...

analytic times in Botai, but also there are other places in northern Kazakhstan where we see remains of horses. So horse domestication is a big invention, if you like, of the steppe pastoral societies and therefore the chariots. We see the ways the chariots look like we see in Anyang in the Shang Dynasty capital, late Shang Dynasty capital.

They were burying horses and chariots together with the nobilities there, and it's a similar practice to what we see in, say, Sintashta culture in the Urals around the Middle Bronze Age. There are also inventions, if I may call them, going back to the food, such as kefir made of mare milk, koumiss it's called. It's still a favorite drink of the people of Central Eurasia.

Felt is a really interesting commodity in terms that you can't always see it being traded because it's organic materials. But there's a big trade in felt and felt makes a huge part of the clothing, traditional clothing industry. Even now in nomadic societies, there are still nomads in Kazakhstan, less so. But in Central Asia, felt is a big thing.

or dressing and making dowry, if you like. It just blows me away. You mentioned chariots and so on, so many others just then, but it blows me away. When we think of Bronze Age, we think of those big civilizations that we mentioned before, like New Kingdom Egypt or Babylon Mesopotamia or the Shang Dynasty in China or Harappa Indus Valley in the Indian subcontinent. But it has been so eye-opening to realize that this area where we don't have those big sedentary civilizations, these steppe

nomads in the steppe, how important and how vital they are in spreading technologies, but also these metals. Can we say that they are the ones who build the creation of this first global network? Well, they definitely were the glue to that. If there was not demand, they would not have done it. So it all comes together very nicely.

But I do want to give them credit for moving fundamental technologies, if you want to call them life skills.

from west to east and back. And that's something that completely transformed societies along the way. And they are the ones who did it. This is how it entered China. This is how we learn about the glory of the Bronze Age civilizations in China and so on. And we see that all reflected in this novel political leadership with Harappa, with Babylon, with Egypt and so on.

So they are the glue. They are the glue and they are moving technologies in the fastest way possible in that time. Over huge, you know, miles and miles, hundreds of thousands of miles of territory as well. It's absolutely astonishing, those distances. It is, but I think someone tested it. You would need three weeks and two horses to ride from one end to the other.

of the steps maybe if you have another course maybe you could do it in less but if you're a single horse person just riding the horse it will be two and then you would just you know transfer whatever goodies you were you were carrying with you but that's it three weeks with two good horses. Marliana this has been absolutely great so it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Thank you for being such a great host.

Well, there you go. There was Dr. Miljana Radovojevic talking all things the origins of the Silk Road, these Bronze Age pastoral communities in Central Asia that were the glue in creating this first global network, the spread of precious metals, of copper, of tin, of bronze. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and found it enlightening. We shouldn't always be thinking of those great Bronze Age empires, whether it's

New Kingdom Egypt or Mesopotamia or one of the dynasties like the Shang dynasty in China for instance we mustn't forget these incredibly important communities that roamed the great steppe in Central Asia last thing from me wherever you're listening to the podcast make sure that you are subscribed that you are following the ancients so that you don't miss out when we release new episodes twice every week but that's enough from me and I will see you in the next episode