East to West and back again: the Silk Road

In much the same way that these firm national boundaries can define simplistic identities, the dominant narratives they have created confine our imagination. Today, it is difficult for many of us to imagine lands in the East as important markers in the trajectory of the human story. Our realities have long been cast in a history in which Rome is the progenitor of Western society, and the dawn of Europe, attributed to Spanish and Portuguese maritime expeditions of the fifteenth century, dominates our vision. In such a history, countries of the East are viewed either as peripheral to the progression of humanity, or as bastions of violence and depravity that have detracted from that progression.