The Ancient Silk Road and World of the Indian Ocean

Undergraduate / Graduate

An investigation of an interconnected Afro-Eurasian world in antiquity. This course explores trade routes and cultural exchange conducted by land (the so-called "Silk Road") and sea (the western Indian Ocean) from the Bronze Age through the early centuries CE. Students will learn how ancient political economies interlock, encounter the ideologies and faiths born of the exchange of ideas, trace the movement of commodities across vast distances, and celebrate the human agents that facilitated these connections across space and time.