Maritime trails

Abstract

Spices and drugs were being transported along a maritime route which linked Southeast Asia to Egypt in Pharaonic times. In the first century AD, Roman sources complain of a drain of metal caused by an imbalance of trade with India. Most of the early items transported along this route were of a perishable nature; archaeologists have discovered few traces of them. This situation changed in the ninth century when more durable items such as ceramics and metal became staples of the trade. Maritime archaeology has yielded significant information on the expansion and scope of this trade between AD 800 and 1500. Scholars have begun to investigate ports in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea, where the earliest stage of transport appears to have been rafts from Southeast Asia. By the early first millennium AD ships carrying passengers and freight made in Southeast Asia connected India and China. Ninth century Arab dhows found in Southeast Asia demonstrate that ships from the Persian Gulf were sailing to the South China Sea at the same time that the literary figure Sinbad the Sailor was depicted as living in Baghdad. Chinese ships and merchants were late participants in the trade, but by the fourteenth century they had become actively involved in commerce; the South Asian maritime network was already in operation 2,000 years ago. Archaeological research is beginning to provide much sharper definition to the picture of the origins, growth, and function of this network.