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Comment by m33k44 | Hacker News Reader

> For me, ancient Chinese civilization is so interesting in large part because of how isolated it is.

For the Europeans this might be true, but not for the Indians. There was lot of exchange between Indus and Chinese civilisations. How do you think Buddhism reached China?

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Buddhism reaching China was in the 1st century CE.

The Persians ruling over Egypt, the Punjab, and Mesopotamia was 509 years before that.

And a 1000 years before that (1500 BC) the Mittani who had very similars gods and royal names that are very similar to Sanskrit had an Empire in the Middle East.

Also, the Maury Empire had close links with the Seleucid Empire (the war elephants used in many of the Seleucid campaigns came from India)

The Indo-Chinese links as can be seen from history are not nearly as old or as well attested.

If we're comparing European contact to Indo-Chinese contact, your sense of when Europe was integrated with the Middle East/Mediterranean culture seems a bit off. The Persia, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea had a lot of contact prior to the 1st Century but "Europe" as a whole did not. For example, England was not Christianized until the 7th Century, Kievan Rus was the 9th Century, Scandinavia was started in the 10th Century, and the Baltic Crusades lasted until the 16th Century. Cultural exchange in "Europe" absolutely is newer than contact between India and China.

Bronze age Britain was involved in the Bronze age trade networks.

The above comment is explicitly talking about spread of religion, not trade networks.

Are you claiming that there was zero cultural transfer along with the material trade happening in the Bronze age?

No, I'm saying one comment is saying contact can be seen by spreading of religion, and therefore Chinese and Indian contact were later than European spread. So, looking at the criteria of the above comments, taking them post at their own standards, which is spread of religion, Europe as an entity did not have "contact" in its entirety until a thousand years after China and India.

Everyone everywhere is involved in the global trade network. It's no less true of the ancient past than it is today.

History and society in western countries is absurdly Euro-centric, it sounds like an oxymoron but it should not be. You must be aware enough to realize what is an absolute truth and what it is just relative from your POV. The other day I had a discussion online mocking the concept that "Aboriginal Australians are so unique because they split from the Europeans first" as if they cannot say exactly the same.

At least in the English language, many, many subjects are less Euro-centric and more Anglo-centric: everything is seen from the vantage of the south-eastern part of a tiny island in the North Atlantic. What's so dark about the Dark Ages? Outside of the north-western boundaries of the Roman empire, not much.

> everything is seen from the vantage of the south-eastern part of a tiny island in the North Atlantic.

Iceland? :)

Thanet?

> How do you think Buddhism reached China?

Bodhidharma, iirc.

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