History of Trans-Eurasian Exchanges

Catalog description

Eurasia is the largest geographical feature on earth. It gave birth to the earliest civilizations and fostered the antecedents of many modern cultures. Yet, in much historical writing, the regions of Eurasia are treated as isolated units with independent trajectories. This is an artifact of nationalism and ignores the key role that trans-Eurasian interaction played in world history. This course investigates the movement of people, technology, ideas, and images across Eurasia from 3,000 BC to the present. It encourages one to think of a past world without national boundaries, a vast interconnected organism inside which materials and ideas were transmitted in all directions, adapted to the cultural and environmental needs of specific areas.