<
https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/10/lidar-mapping-reveals-mountainous-medieval-cities-along-the-silk-road/>
"The history of the Silk Road, a vast network of ancient and medieval trade
routes connecting Beijing and Hangzhou with Constantinople and Cairo, has
mostly been focused on its endpoints: China and the West. Less was known about
the people and cultures the traders encountered along the way. Given the length
of the route, there must have been a lot of encounters. Traders passed through
large cities like Tehran or Baghdad, which we know very well because they still
stand today. They also crossed the Tien Shan, the largest east-west mountain
range on the planet.
“People thought these mountains were just places the caravans had to cross and
get through but not really a major contributor to commerce themselves,” says
Michael Frachetti, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, who
led a team that used drone-based lidar to map two mountainous cities at the
western end of Tien Shan in the modern-day Uzbekistan. Both were built over
2,000 meters above sea level like Machu Picchu or Lhasa, Tibet. One of them,
the Tugunbulak, was larger than Siena, one of the most influential city-states
in medieval Italy."
Via
Fix the News:
https://fixthenews.com/276-nauseously-optimistic/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
