On one side of Kushan coins was the image of their king of a given period; the flip side portrayed the image of a god. Kushans were Zoroastrian, followers of a Persian religion at the time among the world's largest. But various Kushan coins depicted not just their Persian deity, but also a wide variety of divinities, like Shiva or Buddha, borrowed from Persian, Egyptian, Greek, Hindu, and Roman pantheons-even from nations far distant from Kushan territory.
How, in the second century, could an empire centered in Af ghanistan learn so much about religions-and pay tribute to their deities-ranging far beyond its borders? The answer lay in the eco nomic systems of the day. The Kushan Empire allowed, for the first time in history, a protected linkage between the already vi brant trade routes of the Indian Ocean and the Silk Road. Kushans were in regular contact with merchants and holy men whose roots stretched from the Mediterranean basin to the Ganges, from the Arabian Peninsula to the deserts of northwestern China.
There were other such revelations. 'Td find an abundance of Roman coins in the south oflndia, and try to figure out how it got there," Dr. Larry told me. "It turns out the Romans, whose empire touched the Red Sea in Egypt, came around Arabia by boat to Goa to trade. You could reverse-engineer where these ancient coins were turning up and deduce the trade routes of the period."
At the time Dr. Larry had just finished working throughout South Asia on the historically successful worldwide smallpox erad ication program for WHO, and he was about to embark for the University of Michigan to get a master's degree in public health. There was a surprising resonance between his exploration of trade routes and what he was to learn at Michigan.
"I had taken courses in system analysis and was studying epi demiology. This fitted my way of thinking. I realized tracking an pidemic was much like tracking the spread of an ancient civilization like the Kushans with all the archaeological, linguistic, and cultural clues along the way.
On one side of Kushan coins was the image of their king of a given period; the flip side portrayed the image of a god. Kushans were Zoroastrian, followers of a Persian religion at the time among the world's largest. But various Kushan coins depicted not just their Persian deity, but also a wide variety of divinities, like Shiva or Buddha, borrowed from Persian, Egyptian, Greek, Hindu, and Roman pantheons-even from nations far distant from Kushan territory.
How, in the second century, could an empire centered in Af ghanistan learn so much about religions-and pay tribute to their deities-ranging far beyond its borders? The answer lay in the eco nomic systems of the day. The Kushan Empire allowed, for the first time in history, a protected linkage between the already vi brant trade routes of the Indian Ocean and the Silk Road. Kushans were in regular contact with merchants and holy men whose roots stretched from the Mediterranean basin to the Ganges, from the Arabian Peninsula to the deserts of northwestern China.
There were other such revelations. 'Td find an abundance of Roman coins in the south oflndia, and try to figure out how it got there," Dr. Larry told me. "It turns out the Romans, whose empire touched the Red Sea in Egypt, came around Arabia by boat to Goa to trade. You could reverse-engineer where these ancient coins were turning up and deduce the trade routes of the period."
At the time Dr. Larry had just finished working throughout South Asia on the historically successful worldwide smallpox erad ication program for WHO, and he was about to embark for the University of Michigan to get a master's degree in public health. There was a surprising resonance between his exploration of trade routes and what he was to learn at Michigan.
"I had taken courses in system analysis and was studying epi demiology. This fitted my way of thinking. I realized tracking an pidemic was much like tracking the spread of an ancient civilization like the Kushans with all the archaeological, linguistic, and cultural clues along the way.
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