Tag: #SilkRoad

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C is for Comoros

Where are the Comoros? Graphic by spesh531.

Fast Facts

  • Named for: jazīra al qamar Arabic something like جَزِيرَة قَمَر Islands of the Moon)
  • Long/Lat: 11.7 S/43.3 E, 10,400 mi East or 10 hrs from Castro Valley
  • Population: 883,000, about 13 CV’s worth
  • Size: 863 sq mi, 57 Castro Valleys.
  • Avg temp in April: 83 F/29 C
  • Median household income: Low, ~$3,000 annually
  • Official languages: Arabic & French (Ethnicity = Comorian, but heavily influenced by the Bantu, Arabic, and French)
  • Main industries: Spice exports; ylang-ylang an essential perfume oil, 80% of world’s supply comes from Comoros

So far, we’ve explored a few places in the Northern Hemisphere, so this is a good time to go south. How about an island chain, off the coast of Southeast Africa?

Graphic courtesy of solarey.net.

The country of the Comoros includes three islands: Ngazidja (Grande Comore), Mwali (Mohéli), and Ndzwani (Anjouan). A fourth island to the southeast, Mayotte, has noticeably different name: it’s French.

What were the French doing there? And, if you notice the Arabic reference to the name al Qamar or al-Qumr, what were the Arabs doing there?

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U is for Umbrella

Oil paper umbrella, Chinese-design, shown in cave paintings from India, @200 BCE-600CE. From wikimedia.

Combine the histories and myths of Daedalus, Da Vinci, Archimedes, and St. Joseph into a single person. Now give that guy a wife, one who has learned some practical science from her husband. She invents the umbrella. Sort of.

The umbrella, a device used as a sun shade or rain cover, dates back to almost 3000 BCE. Since the ancient cultures that we know most cluster around the Mediterranean, the primary use of umbrella-like instruments was as fans or canopies to protect mainly the royals, and later the wealthy and aristocratic. Thus, the umbrella in the most ancient sense, was a status symbol.

But the other form of umbrella we modern people know is the collapsible kind–that is, those of us who experience rain in the north (or extreme south). Collapsible umbrellas, invented somewhere between 600 BCE and 50 CE in China, were also more symbolic than functional, at least according to art left behind. The Chinese led the world in innovative designs of the umbrella. Europeans came to know the designs; they just didn’t use them. At least, not until umbrellas were re-invented as a status symbol, eventually to make their way into popular and practical use by schmoes like you and me.

In focusing on the history of the umbrella in ancient times, let’s consider:

  1. What were umbrellas for?
  2. Where and when were umbrellas used in ancient history?
  3. What does the invention and innovation of the umbrella signify?
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Z is for Zhang Qian & Zheng He

They were greatest explorers of their era. One intrepid ambassador struck out west, across the Jade Gate, and stayed so long that he was imprisoned and married before coming home. The other sailed everywhere, in giant ships that dwarfed the little caravels that the Europeans had invented. He left a trail of sailing charts, reports, and temples all across the Indian Ocean.

At the end of the alphabet are two important Chinese explorers, ones who “discovered” the trading routes, over land and sea, which helped carve out where east and west might exchange their goods: the silk, the frankincense, the pepper, and the ideas.

Zheng He meeting traders from Asia to the west. From TopChinaTravel.com.

The stories of these explorers seem to be the perfect bookends to wrap up 26 A to Z posts about this amazing time and geography known as the Silk Road.

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