The Silk Road - Ancient Pathway to the Modern World

Le Saboteur

Active member
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The American Museum of Natural History in New York City is unveiling its newest exhibition on the 15th of November. Covering the Golden Age of the Silk Road (roughly the years 600-1200), the exhibit features four prominent cities on the route -- Xi'an, Turfan, Samarkand, and Baghdad, then the heart of the Muslim world.

Beginning with Xi'an's silk-making process "Traveling the Silk Road" moves deliberately across the 4,600-mile route to Tarfun, where an example of the underground irrigation techniques of the oasis are on display, to the merchant city of Samarkand, before ending in Baghdad. And "(t)hroughout the show," you will notice, as Edward Rothstein in the New York Times writes, "the theme of cross-cultural fertilization recurs: we see ninth-century Chinese silk patterns influenced by Persian designs, and a stone pillar erected in Xian in 781 displaying both Chinese characters and Christian iconography."

And as an added bonus, musicians from Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road Project will be on hand for live performances every Sunday.

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Head your camel in this direction to read Rothstein's full review, then wander over here to check out the preview site that the museum has assembled!
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
The Silk Road Exhibit has, unfortunately, left the American Museum of Natural History. Hopefully some of you on the East Coast had the opportunity to visit while it was there.

While cataloging some back issues of National Geographic over the weekend, I came across an article dedicated to one of the lesser known Silk Roads, the Ancient "Tea and Horse Caravan Road," the "Silk Road" of Southwestern China. I thought I'd post it here if you were interested in reading it.

Mark Jenkins said:
Deep in the mountains of western Sichuan I'm hacking through a bamboo jungle, trying to find a legendary trail. Just 60 years ago, when much of Asia still moved by foot or hoof, the Tea Horse Road was a thoroughfare of commerce, the main link between China and Tibet. But my search could be in vain. A few days earlier I met a man who used to carry backbreaking loads of tea along the path; he warned me that time, weather, and invasive plants may have wiped out the Tea Horse Road.

Full article here.

Photo gallery of the trek.

A couple of videos from the Silk Road Project.

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.pdf file of the Silk Road Foundation newsletter. Contributor Jeff Fuchs also retraced the complete route over an eight month period of time, and wrote about the experience.

A good overview of the route can be read here.

And finally, a video overview of the Silk Road Exhibit for those of us who couldn't be there.

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Le Saboteur

Active member
Secrets of the Silk Road: Mystery Mummies of China

Last year, the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana (that's right near Disneyland for all of you non-Californians) scored their third major exhibit from China with Secrets of the Silk Road. It set a new attendance record for the museum, and ended its tenure without much fanfare before being trundled off to Houston's Museum of Natural Science.

I had promptly forgotten about it until earlier this month when the Times of Los Angeles and New York reported that the Chinese government demanded that the Penn Museum (officially the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology) not display any of the artifacts from China. Instead, it was set to open with a collection of photographs, multimedia displays, and a recreation of an excavation site.

Not very thrilling when the central figure of the exhibit was supposed to be a 3,500 (?) year-old mummy long identified as Caucasoid with red hair. I honestly didn't expect it to ever be mounted, and our East Coast members would miss out on an opportunity to see the very first Chinese mummies to be exhibited in the United States. Fortunately, this wasn't the end of the story.

As reported today in the New York Times, the Chinese government has finally relented and is allowing a brief exhibition period! If you're anywhere in the vicinity of the City of Brotherly Love, take a moment to check out the exhibit. The mummies are only on display until the 15th of March, and the rest of artifacts will only be on display until the 28th of March.

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Edward Rothstein said:
In another part of this 6,000-square-foot exhibition lies the body of a woman wrapped in a wool cloak, her lavish brown hair draped to the side of her face, long lashes still framing her sunken eyes. Her skin, tinged with a white coating is eerily sensuous. That must have been a cold winter: she is still wearing fur-lined leather boots. She is in her early 40s, we are told, though that was at least 3,500 years ago. The Beauty of Xiaohe she’s called, and we forgive the poetic liberty, because in her death, against all the cautionary chastisements of later centuries, even that ephemeral aesthetic property remains intact.

Exhibition Review: Another Stop on a Long, Improbable Journey

Secrets of the Silk Road Slide Show

Penn Museum's Exhibit site


A clip from NBC Nightly News.

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In conjunction with this blockbuster exhibit, the Penn Museum has been marshaling all of its resources into giving the museum going public more information than they could ever possibly want including a PhD candidate's blog, On the Silk Road. There's also the in-house magazine, Expedition; the current issue features articles on the Silk Road, the mummies, and other discoveries from the region. You'll need a .pdf reader, but every article is available to read on-line. Check out the site here.

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Finally, the Penn Museum has been holding a series of lectures -- since late last year -- introducing museum goers to the region and it's history. And for those of us who don't live in the area, they've posted them in their entirety on their site and Youtube Channel. They're lengthy, but if you have the time I would definitely sit through them. You might pick up something you didn't know before.

The first lecture is a smidgen over an hour, and I've embedded it below for those of you who don't like following links.

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Additional Material

The Houston Museum of Natural Science's Youtube Channel has some interesting videos from their time with the exhibit. Check it out here.

The Bowers Museum also has some neat vids from their time originating the exhibit. Check them out here.

An article from The New York Times on the mummies and political tensions arising from the area: In the Desert, a Trove of 4,000 Year Old Mummies
 
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