Romans vs Khmers: They came, they saw, they traded... or did they?

[geovalin]

Bennett Murray

No one disputes that Oc Eo is a site of great archaelogical value. Vietnam this week named it a "national relic". But was it also the place where ancient Romans and Khmers met?

In 2nd century AD Egypt, the legendary Greco-Roman scientist Claudius Ptolemy put the extent of the known world onto paper. From his home in Alexandria, he gathered reports from sailors who had made perilous journeys to India and possibly beyond. Though details were sparse, a voyager named Alexander described a distant port called Kattigara on the Sinus Magna (Great Gulf) to the east of the Golden Chersonese peninsula – widely considered to be mainland Malaysia.

Halfway across the world around the same time, the bustling seaport Oc Eo was part of the flourishing Funan Kingdom, the earliest known pre-Angkorian civilisation and origin of the earliest Khmer-language inscriptions.

Located in modern Vietnam’s An Giang province near the Cambodian border, Oc Eo was on Monday declared a “national relic” by the Vietnamese government. Vuong Binh Thanh, chairman of the People’s Committee of An Giang, reportedly told onlookers that it was essential to preserve the 450-hectare site for the sake of tourism and academia alike.

read more: http://www.phnompenhpost.com/post-weekend/romans-vs-khmers-they-came-they-saw-they-traded-or-did-they

[Northwindhermit]

Very interesting article.

[Muhendis]

I'm having problems believing that the Roman ships were capable of such journeys. There was no Suez canal so they would have had to take the long rout out of the Med. and around Africa. Whoever if someone were to tell me that the Romans went overland from Turkey along the silk road to the far east then I would find that quite plausible.

[HerbalEd]

I'm having problems believing that the Roman ships were capable of such journeys. There was no Suez canal so they would have had to take the long rout out of the Med. and around Africa. Whoever if someone were to tell me that the Romans went overland from Turkey along the silk road to the far east then I would find that quite plausible.

The Romans didn't need to sail around the southern tip of Africa. Because they had conquered and occupied Egypt, they could have easily built ships there and sailed south down the Red Sea and then across the Arabian Sea to India and further east.

Edited July 6, 2015 by HerbalEd

[LawrenceN]

I'm having problems believing that the Roman ships were capable of such journeys. There was no Suez canal so they would have had to take the long rout out of the Med. and around Africa. Whoever if someone were to tell me that the Romans went overland from Turkey along the silk road to the far east then I would find that quite plausible.

The Romans didn't need to sail around the southern tip of Africa. Because they had conquered and occupied Egypt, they could have easily built ships there and sailed south down the Red Sea and then across the Arabian Sea to India and further east.

True. Trade and diplomacy between Rome and India flourished in the early centuries AD. Even Greece six centuries before Rome's heyday exchanged ambassadors with certain Indian kingdoms. And it's well-known that India, China, and Southeast Asia were in contact that long ago, so not a stretch to believe that Romans knew of Funan. Maybe not regular commerce, maybe not exchange of diplomats, but word-of-mouth in Indian seaports for sure.

There's a great novel by the American author Gore Vidal called Creation. It's set in the sixth century BC. The premise is that it's an old man, half Greek, half Persian, narrating his life story to a nephew. He was an ambassador from Athens to India, and then sent to China. As the story goes, he was captured on his way to China and made a slave for a time until he was able to communicate enough to make his identity and mission known. Vidal wrote a number of historical novels, a very thoroughly researched. Vidal chose the sixth century BC because Aristotle, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, and Confucius were all alive at that time.

[Kerryd]

Some of the earliest maps of the world showing Asia date back to the beginning of the Christian Era (C.E.).

Marinus of Tyre was one of the first (if not the first) to show China on a map he drew c. 120 C.E. (China was apparently known by 2 different names at the time. Serica and Sinae. If you went overland to the Northern area you reached The Land Of Silk (Serica), if you went by sea and arrived on the north shore of the "Great Gulf" (South China Sea) you were in Sinae.)

A reconstruction of a map credited to Posidonius (c. 150-130 B.C.E.) also notes areas called "Seres" (Serica) and "Sinae" however that is more likely due to whoever did the reconstruction (in the 1800s) adding that information. (Posidonius had also calculated Earth's circumference to be 240,000 stadia (24,000 miles) which was pretty good for that period as the Earth is actually 24,901 miles in circumference).

(Interestingly, Marinus supposedly was the one who came up with the term "Antarctic" (Antarctic being the opposite of Artic). "Antarktike" was the ancient Greek word but (supposedly) that area wasn't discovered for many centuries to come. (Why would he coin a term for a place that, theoretically, he didn't know existed at the time ? Ahh, the Greeks also came up with the name "arktikos", which was in reference to celestial formations (Ursa Major or Ursa Minor), the Big and Little Dippers which appear in the far north (to someone living on the Mediterranean at least). Perhaps Marinus had deduced that if there was an "arktikos" there must also be an "antarktike" on the opposite side - which to most people in his time were areas considered to be inhospitable to human civilization.)

The Ptolemy map (1st projection) also show the names Serica and Sinae. As well they depict the Malay peninsula from which you can (more or less) determine the whereabouts of modern Thailand.

Kattigari (or Cattigara) was supposedly located north of the Mekong Delta. Oc Eo is shown as being located a considerable distance inland, more towards the Gulf of Thailand than the Mekong Delta. However it seems that a trbutary of the Mekong may have once emptied into the Gulf, as well there appears to have been many ancient canals in the area. Even if Oc Eo isn't the "Cattigara" of ancient times, it doesn't mean that Roman artifacts couldn't be found there. After all, Chinese silks have been found in Egyptian tombs dating back to 1,000 B.C.E.

Trade between China and the rest of the world had been going on for centuries before anyone thought to draw up a map. The main difference was that previously, most of the trade was not direct. Goods were traded with people in neighbouring regions who themselves traded those same goods with their neighbours further away and visa-versa.

It is quite interesting to get a glimpse of how our ancestors saw the world 2,000+ years ago (and note how they, before Christianity came along, knew the earth was round), and had even managed to calculate it's circumference almost precisely (96.4% accuracy, without sextants or compasses) !

[Muhendis]

What an interesting topic and replies. I wish all topics were so.

Thank you guys for your information. Just one small point. With the trading of goods from east to west and vise versa as described by Kerryd ("Goods were traded with people in neighbouring regions who themselves traded those same goods with their neighbours further away and visa-versa.") could that not account for the Roman artifacts found at Oc Eo?

[Lokie]

These type of stories enthrall me, and make you think, very intresting...

[Hardie]

There's no substitute for evidence... Coins don't prove much.