this post was submitted on 26 May 2024
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People would follow the silk road sometimes. Rome actually had limited diplomatic contact with China, even. That's not on the map, maybe because they didn't really understand where it was, besides somewhere far to the east. I'm surprised SE Asia is on it, I'll have to do some reading about that, but India was known even to the Greeks.
Quality of information would drop off really rapidly with distance, though, since it was easy to make up a fish tale about what you saw in far-off lands. So, you find a lot of crazy BS mixed in with helpful nuggets in things like Herodotus's Histories.
Alexander even tried to conquer India, but died before he got that far.
IIRC some of the scribes say he actually did, but didn't stay out of respect for their bravery. But, yeah, that's basically "she goes to another school", that never happened.
Plineys writings serve the same purpose. An example of knowledge brought to my by beer.