We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far

Measurements taken on skeletal remains in cemeteries in southern Germany indicate that the average height for men was about five feet eight inches, for women about five feet four inches, statures well above those of late medieval and early modern times. Measurements taken on skeletons in other regions are comparable. In Denmark, for example, the average height for men was about five feet nine inches--just above those for southwestern Germany--and for women about five feet four inches. These average heights were not achieved again until the twentieth century. Compared with earlier and later populations in the same regions, these average measurements show that most people had adequate nutrition during most of their lives and their living conditions were generally good. (p. 139-140)

A similar conclusion emerges from a grave in a small cemetery at Kunszentmárton, in Hungary, but here we see something more. This man was buried, around 610, with weapons and horse harness gear as well as tools and models for making metal ornaments. In this case, the ornaments were not fibulae but sheet metal relief objects that could be made of gold, silver, or bronze. These ornaments were for decorating horse harness equipment, belt attachments, or sword scabbards. The striking thing about them is that they represent styles that are associated with different regional traditions. If any one of these was found alone in the grave, the man would be linked to the stylistic tradition of the region in which that style was common. These models representing different regional traditions show that this craftsman could make ornaments suiting the fashions of several different groups of people. Apparently, he crafted objects according to the tastes of his customers rather than his own home tradition. (p. 147)

On an important carved stone found at Niederdollendorf, on the Rhine, one side bears a representation believed to be the earliest picture of Christ in the Rhineland (dating to the sixth century). On the other side is an image of a warrior, with sword and canteen, shown combing his hair. (p. 151)

Before the Industrial Revolution, moving goods by water was vastly cheaper than moving them overland. Estimates suggest that a given quantity of goods costs twenty-five times as much to send by land as by sea. (p. 157)

Unique manufactured objects demonstrate connections over great distances. The bronze Buddha figurine found at the manufacturing and commericial centre at Helgö, in central Sweden, was made during the sixth century in the Swat Valley, in north-western India, some six thousand miles from the spot where archaeologists found it in 1956. (p. 162)

The animal style [of ornamentation] that emerged in northern Europe has been understood as reflecting "different modes of representation" from those of early Christianity. The proliferation of the animal style at this time may have been in deliberate reaction to the representations that were being created in the late Roman world in the imperial provinces. Whereas Roman representation tended to be narrative--to tell stories--the animal style of ornament was instead symbolic and, it is important to add, difficult for outsiders to read. ... This line of argument would be consistent with the idea that many communities in Europe, especially those north of the old Roman frontier line at the Rhine and Danube, did not begin to seriously adopt the new religion until much later than some of the areas within the Roman lands, and many actively resisted to symbols of the new religion as well as the substance and practices. In resisting, they reached back into earlier times, even to the prehistoric Iron Age, to adapt and recreate iconography that would serve their purposes. (p. 175-176)

Archaeological excavations of cities such as Taraz (in Kazakhstan) and Samarkand show that the designs on the products often catered to the stylistic preferences of the neighbouring nomads as well as the local urban population. For example, seals on gemstones from ancient Samarkand (the archaeological site Afrasiyab) have two different styles: one depicting a bull with wings, reflecting the mythological subject matter preferred by the townsmen, the other a goat in flight with an arrow in his neck, an example of the scenes of the hunt so dear to the nomads. (p 19)

The Uighurs, hitherto predominantly nomad pastoralists, began to settle, taking up urban and agricultural pursuits. Like their mentors, the Sogdians, they developed a rich commercial sulture as Silk Road traders and a complex spiritual life in which Manichaeism, Buddhism, and Christianity were all represented. In the eastern steppe zone, they replaced the Sogdians as culture-bearers. ... The post-imperial Uighurs produced a rich literature, largely religious in content, for a population of which perhaps one-third was literate. The shift in the role of the Uighurs is reflected in a phrase from an early tenth-century Arab historian, Ibn al-Falqîh, who called them "the Arabs of the Turks." (p 47)

According to Herodotus, the distance [from Sardis to Susa on Darius the Great's Royal Road] could be covered in less than fifteen days, when the system of post horses was used. The road was divided into sections that could be covered in a day by a man on horseback. At each station, a rider would hand off his dispatch to a fresh rider and horse: "No mortal thing travels faster than these Persian couriers," Herodotus writes. ...

The Persian relay system appears to have been faster than any other until the thirteenth century, when Genghis Khan's couriers carried messages from his headquarters near the Yellow River in China to the western side of the Black Sea, a distance of more than 8,000 kilometres (5,000 miles.) Khan's system was somewhat different from the Persian one: each of the great Mongol leader's riders was responsible for the message he carried, and so one courier travelled the whole distance, strapping himself to his mounts so he would not fall off. (At the same time on the other side of the world, it should be noted, the Incas who did not have fast, load-bearing animals, were using fleet human runners to carry messages, as well as perishable items like fish, hundreds of kilometres in the Andes and its foothills.)