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Podcast: Exchanges: A Cambridge UP Podcast
Episode: Craig Benjamin, "Empires of Ancient Eurasia: The First Silk Roads Era, 100 BCE-250 CE" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
Description: In the late second century BCE, a series of trading route developed between China in the east and Rome’s empire in the west. Craig Benjamin’s Empires of Ancient Eurasia: The First Silk Roads Era, 100 BCE-250 CE (Cambridge University Press, 2018) describes the emergence of these routes and the roles the empires of the era played in their development. Benjamin credits the pastoral nomadic tribes of the Xiongnu and the Yuezhi, with playing a key role in catalyzing the Silk Road, as their presence led the Chinese to undertake expeditions westward that brought them into direct contact with the peop...