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Chronology Of European Exploration Of Asia
This is a chronology of the early European exploration of Asia. First wave of exploration (mainly by land) Antiquity * 515 BC: Scylax explores the Indus and the sea route across the Indian Ocean to Egypt. * 330 BC: Alexander the Great conquers parts of Central Asia and parts of northwestern India. * 300 BC: Seleucus Nicator, founder of the Seleucid Empire, forays into northwestern India but is defeated by Chandragupta Maurya, founder of the Maurya Empire, and they become allies soon after. * 250 – 120 BC: Greco-Bactrian states in parts of Central Asia and South Asia, including the Fergana Valley ( Alexandria Eschate), Transoxiana ( Alexandria on the Oxus) and Punjab ( Alexandria on the Indus). * 180 BC – 10 AD: The Indo-Greek Kingdom was located in areas now part of Afghanistan, Pakistan and north-west India. * 30 BC – 640 AD: With the acquisition of Ptolemaic Egypt, the Romans begin trading with India. The Empire now has a direct connection to the Spice trade Egypt h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transoxiana
Transoxiana or Transoxania (, now called the Amu Darya) is the Latin name for the region and civilization located in lower Central Asia roughly corresponding to eastern Uzbekistan, western Tajikistan, parts of southern Kazakhstan, parts of Turkmenistan and southern Kyrgyzstan. The name was first coined by Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC when Alexander's troops conquered the region. The region may have had a similar Greek name in the days of Alexander the Great, but the earlier name is no longer known. Geographically, it is the region between the rivers Amu Darya to its south and the Syr Darya to its north. The region of Transoxiana was one of the satrapies (provinces) of the Achaemenid Empire of Persia under the name Sogdia. It was defined within the classical world of Persia to distinguish it from Iran proper, especially its northeastern province of Khorasan, a term originating with the Sasanians, although early Arab historians and geographers tended to subs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gaius Plinius Secundus
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 79), known in English as Pliny the Elder ( ), was a Roman Empire, Roman author, Natural history, naturalist, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the Roman emperor, emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic (''Natural History''), a comprehensive thirty-seven-volume work covering a vast array of topics on human knowledge and the natural world, which became an editorial model for encyclopedias. He spent most of his spare time studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field. Among Pliny's greatest works was the twenty-volume ''Bella Germaniae'' ("The History of the German Wars"), which is Lost literary work, no longer extant. ''Bella Germaniae'', which began where Aufidius Bassus' ''Libri Belli Germanici'' ("The War with the Germans") left off, was used as a source by other prominent Roman historians, including Plutarch, Tacitus, and Suetonius. Tacitus may have used ''Bella Ger ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taprobana
Taprobana (; ), Trapobana, and Taprobane (, ) was the name by which the Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka was known to the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks. Tabrobane is suggested to be derived from Sanskrit "Tamraparni". This name could be a reference to the "copper colored" shores of Sri Lanka, and may have entered Greek via the Sinhala language, Sinhalese and/or the Pali language, Pali "Tambapanni". History Reports of the island's existence were known before the time of Alexander the Great as inferred from Pliny the Elder, Pliny. The treatise ''On the Universe, De Mundo'', supposedly by Aristotle (died 322 BC) but according to others by Chrysippus, Chrysippus the Stoic (280 to 208 BC), incorrectly states that the List of islands by area, island is as large as Great Britain (in fact, it is only about one third as big). The name was first reported to Europeans by the Greek geographer Megasthenes around 290 BC. Herodotus (444 BC) does not mention the island. The first Geograph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Annius Plocamus
Annius Plocamus was a Roman tax collector from the Mediterranean, who facilitated direct trade and the first contacts between the Roman Empire and Ancient Sri Lanka. The Romans had already heard about the island of Sri Lanka, which the Greeks had described under the name of Taprobane. However, according to Pliny, as described in his ''Natural History'', it was during the reign of the Emperor Claudius (AD 41–54) that the two civilizations first met. A freedman of Annius Plocamus having farmed the customs of the Red Sea on behalf of his state's treasury, while sailing along the coast of Arabia, was driven by northern monsoon winds, passed Carmania and on the fifteenth day into Hippuros, a port of Ceylon. The freedman was entertained with hospitality by the Sri Lankan monarch. With the freedman's description of the Romans and Caesar, as well as the impressive quality of Roman coins in his possession, the Sinhalese king sent an embassy to learn more about these people. According ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spice Trade
The spice trade involved historical civilizations in Asia, Northeast Africa and Europe. Spices, such as cinnamon, cassia, cardamom, ginger, pepper, nutmeg, star anise, clove, and turmeric, were known and used in antiquity and traded in the Eastern World. These spices found their way into the Near East before the beginning of the Christian era, with fantastic tales hiding their true sources. The maritime aspect of the trade was dominated by the Austronesian peoples in Southeast Asia, namely the ancient Indonesian sailors who established routes from Southeast Asia to Sri Lanka and India (and later China) by 1500 BC. These goods were then transported by land toward the Mediterranean and the Greco-Roman world via the incense route and the Roman–India routes by Indian and Persian traders.Fage 1975: 164 The Austronesian maritime trade lanes later expanded into the Middle East and eastern Africa by the 1st millennium AD, resulting in the Austronesian colonization of Madagas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Trade With India
Indo-Roman trade relations (see also the spice trade and incense road) was trade between the Indian subcontinent and the Roman Empire in Europe and the Mediterranean Sea. Trade through the overland caravan routes via Asia Minor and the Middle East, though at a relative trickle compared to later times, preceded the southern trade route via the Red Sea, which started around the beginning of the Common Era (CE), following the reign of Augustus and his conquest of Egypt in 30 BCE. The southern route so helped enhance trade between the ancient Roman Empire and the Indian subcontinent, that Roman politicians and historians are on record decrying the loss of silver and gold to buy silk to pamper Roman wives, and the southern route grew to eclipse and then totally supplant the overland trade route. Roman and Greek traders frequented the ancient Tamil country, present day Southern India and Sri Lanka, securing trade with the seafaring Tamil states of the Pandyan, Chola and Cher ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ptolemaic Kingdom
The Ptolemaic Kingdom (; , ) or Ptolemaic Empire was an ancient Greek polity based in Ancient Egypt, Egypt during the Hellenistic period. It was founded in 305 BC by the Ancient Macedonians, Macedonian Greek general Ptolemy I Soter, a Diadochi, companion of Alexander the Great, and ruled by the Ptolemaic dynasty until the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC. Reigning for nearly three centuries, the Ptolemies were the longest and final Dynasties of ancient Egypt, dynasty of ancient Egypt, heralding a distinct era of Hellenistic religion, religious and cultural syncretism between Greek and Egyptian culture. Alexander the Great conquered Thirty-first Dynasty of Egypt, Persian-controlled Egypt in 332 BC during Wars of Alexander the Great, his campaigns against the Achaemenid Empire. Death of Alexander the Great, Alexander's death in 323 BC was followed by the Empire of Alexander the Great, rapid unraveling of the Macedonian Empire amid competing claims by the ''diadochi'', his closest fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North India
North India is a geographical region, loosely defined as a cultural region comprising the northern part of India (or historically, the Indian subcontinent) wherein Indo-Aryans (speaking Indo-Aryan languages) form the prominent majority population. It extends from the Himalayas, Himalayan mountain range in the north to the Indo-Gangetic plains, the Thar Desert, till Central Highlands (India), Central Highlands. It occupies nearly two-quarters of the area and population of India and includes one of the three List of Indian cities by population#List, mega cities of India: Delhi. In a more specific and administrative sense, North India can also be used to denote the northern Indo-Gangetic Plain within this broader expanse, to the Thar Desert. Several major rivers flow through the region including the Indus, the Ganges, the Yamuna and the Narmada rivers. North India includes the states of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, India, Punjab and Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pakistan
Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country#Countries, second-largest Muslim population as of 2023. Islamabad is the nation's capital, while Karachi is List of cities in Pakistan by population, its largest city and financial centre. Pakistan is the List of countries and dependencies by area, 33rd-largest country by area. Bounded by the Arabian Sea on the south, the Gulf of Oman on the southwest, and the Sir Creek on the southeast, it shares land borders with India to the east; Afghanistan to the west; Iran to the southwest; and China to the northeast. It shares a maritime border with Oman in the Gulf of Oman, and is separated from Tajikistan in the northwest by Afghanistan's narrow Wakhan Corridor. Pakistan is the site of History of Pakistan, several ancient cultures, including the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran border, west, Turkmenistan to the Afghanistan–Turkmenistan border, northwest, Uzbekistan to the Afghanistan–Uzbekistan border, north, Tajikistan to the Afghanistan–Tajikistan border, northeast, and China to the Afghanistan–China border, northeast and east. Occupying of land, the country is predominantly mountainous with plains Afghan Turkestan, in the north and Sistan Basin, the southwest, which are separated by the Hindu Kush mountain range. Kabul is the country's capital and largest city. Demographics of Afghanistan, Afghanistan's population is estimated to be between 36 and 50 million. Ancient history of Afghanistan, Human habitation in Afghanistan dates to the Middle Paleolithic era. Popularly referred to as the graveyard of empire ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indo-Greek Kingdom
The Indo-Greek Kingdom, also known as the Yavana Kingdom, was a Hellenistic period, Hellenistic-era Ancient Greece, Greek kingdom covering various parts of modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan and northwestern India. The term "Indo-Greek Kingdom" loosely describes a number of various Hellenistic states, ruling from regional capitals like Taxila, Sagala, Pushkalavati, and Bagram. Other centers are only hinted at; e.g. Ptolemy's ''Geographia (Ptolemy), Geographia'' and the nomenclature of later kings suggest that a certain Theophilos (king), Theophilus in the south of the Indo-Greek sphere of influence may also have had a royal seat there at one time. The kingdom was founded when the Graeco-Bactrian king Demetrius I of Bactria invaded India from Bactria in about 200 BC. The Greeks to the east of the Seleucid Empire were eventually divided to the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, Graeco-Bactrian Kingdom and the Indo-Greek Kingdoms in the North Western Indian Subcontinent. During the two cent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
