Tag: #SilkRoad

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X is for Xinjiang

Not a sovereign state (country), Xinjiang is still huge, bigger than Texas, California, Nevada, and Minnesota combined. Wikipedia photo.

Fast Facts

  • Named for: The full name is the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR)
  • Capital: Ürümqi
  • Long/Lat: 41 N/85 E, about 13 hours or 7000 mi from CV to the Taklmakan Desert, going west.
  • Population: 25,890,000 or 1.3 million CVs
  • Size: 642,000 sq mi or 10x CVs
  • Avg temp in April: 55 F/15 C (mountainous)
  • Median household income: $10,000 GDP/per capita but income???
  • Ethnicity: 44% Uygur/42% Han
  • Main industries: Agriculture, mining for natural resources

At the end of the alphabet, there seem to be a lot of wiggling and hedging. I am chagrined that I had to include non-UN members, countries not really independent, and now this X. Xinjiang is not a country–not even disputed as a country–but simply a region within China. There is a dispute, but we’ll get to that. It’s simply that there are no countries beginning with an “X,” so either it was live with this region, skip the letter, spell names in Catalan (which uses X), or choose a different theme. I’ll take the penalty point and move on.

At over 640,000 sq mi, Xinjiang would be the 16th largest country in the world. It’s bigger than Texas, California, Nevada, and Minnesota combined. At nearly 26 million people, it’s the 60th largest in population, which is more people than Florida. If it were a country, it would dwarf the rest of the Small Countries on my list. (I wonder if it would be bigger than all combined–let’s see, if I put them all in a spreadsheet to add their populations and …nahhh.)

However, Xinjiang has an interesting status. It was designated as the autonomous region of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR) back in 1955. A brisk walk through the history before and after that will remind us of what boundary states are about, even those giant regions within a giant country.

Historically, Xinjiang spread across a wide basin–the Tarim basin–ringed by a series of mountains, Tian Shan to the north and Kunlun to the south. Scholars are careful to note that Xinjiang was not simply a partial stop on the Silk Road, but the road passed through it, which was its claim to worldwide fame.

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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)
  • Capital: Moroni
  • 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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