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Ancient China and Roman Empire: how? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5213 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 10 25 March 2013 at 4:59pm | IP Logged | ||
You may also be interested in the Silk Road. Though the Wikipedia article's coverage continues past the period you're thinking of, it seems to have begun during that time. And, as the article notes, there were already other existing trade routes prior to that. Also (from the above Wikipedia article): "The main traders during Antiquity were the Indian and Bactrian traders, then from the 5th to the 8th century the Sogdian traders, then afterward the Arab and Persian traders." It'd be interesting to speculate as to which languages (depending on whether one was looking at overland or sea routes), would be the most useful intermediary languages in the "telephone" chain. By the way, the footnotes (#35 on) for your Romano-Chinese relations Wikipedia article point to intriguing research/theories on Ancient Romans soldiers (survivors of "lost" legions) settling in the Liqian region in Ancient China, with DNA traces (green/blue eyes, etc) persisting to the present. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4448 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 10 of 10 31 March 2013 at 10:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Personally I'm not a history expert. Based on what I've read the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius
supposedly visited China in ancient times. I'm not sure there were regular travels and exchanges between government officials on both sides. Back then to travel from Europe to China or vice versa without the Suez Canal ships would have to stop in the Middle-East, do part of their journey by land and then by ship again once they reached the ocean unless you take the longer route of circumnavigating around Africa. The journey would be long and impractical. A lot of trade between Europe and China up to the Renaissance involve the Arabs as middleman. There are people in between who are fluent in several languages acting as interpreters. There were no foreign language courses to take in school back then so usually the ones who spoke several languages were the merchants. People who did business with foreigners. Sometime in the 16th century the Portuguese went to China and set up a missionary outpost at Macau. How exactly did the Chinese communicate with the foreigners? With a lot of misunderstandings on both sides obviously... Edited by shk00design on 31 March 2013 at 10:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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