10-20-2015, 05:03 PM
Hi Evan, sorry but that is my point, the established geographers like Ptolemy and Pomponius Mela always thought the Seres were not Indian, a look at Ptolemy’s map shows that he thought the Seres were located east of the Pamir Mountains and north of the Himalayas stretching to the Eastern Sea but obviously the Roman traders, merchants, politicians and writers thought that the Seres were Indian. Serindia in Tang dynasty times was Chinese Turkestan, Tarim Basin or roughly present day Xinjiang province. The region you mentioned Cherala I am assuming is the kingdom of the Chera rulers on the South-Western side of India, Kerala. I am not disputing that some Romans may have considered the Seres as Indian, just the credible geographers like Ptolemy knew better. 
They exported mainly black pepper and silk to Rome via the Roman controlled Red Sea port of Berenice but while the Romans maintained a small Red Sea fleet to combat piracy most of the vessels who conducted this trade were captained and crewed by Persians as they knew the Monsoon trade routes and winds as Persian then and in Tang times was the “Lingua Franca” of the Southern Seas and trading ports just as Sogdian was the language of the land routes. Pliny wrote that the Cheras sent a delegation to Claudius and they described them as tall with blue eyes, red hair and harsh voices and that these Seres bought their goods to the northern riverbank and laid them out for the Chera traders to inspect, purchase and ship downstream and along the western coast to the Malabar region of Southern India and export to various markets including Egypt. I am not sure if this river was the Indus or the Ganges but I am assuming that it was the Indus. So even the Cheras were probably mistaken in assuming that the Indo-Iranian middlemen were Seres or Chinese.
Alanus I read an interesting article about 5th Century AD Tashtyk burial masks and how although considered a Turkish tribe, a lot of the death masks looked more Europoid and they liked to tattoo themselves like the Pazyryk people. They first appeared around the 1st century AD and I suppose there is a possibility that some members were originally Indo-Iranian. They lived near the Yenisei river in Siberia and at some stage the Issedones according to some geographers controlled this region. Could a lot of them have been absorbed by other tribes and peoples over time. I also read in a recent book that the ancestors of the Akhal-teke horses were also bred by the Massagetae who just happened to be the neighbours of the Issedones/Wusun.
http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestu...rior-race/
They exported mainly black pepper and silk to Rome via the Roman controlled Red Sea port of Berenice but while the Romans maintained a small Red Sea fleet to combat piracy most of the vessels who conducted this trade were captained and crewed by Persians as they knew the Monsoon trade routes and winds as Persian then and in Tang times was the “Lingua Franca” of the Southern Seas and trading ports just as Sogdian was the language of the land routes. Pliny wrote that the Cheras sent a delegation to Claudius and they described them as tall with blue eyes, red hair and harsh voices and that these Seres bought their goods to the northern riverbank and laid them out for the Chera traders to inspect, purchase and ship downstream and along the western coast to the Malabar region of Southern India and export to various markets including Egypt. I am not sure if this river was the Indus or the Ganges but I am assuming that it was the Indus. So even the Cheras were probably mistaken in assuming that the Indo-Iranian middlemen were Seres or Chinese.
Alanus I read an interesting article about 5th Century AD Tashtyk burial masks and how although considered a Turkish tribe, a lot of the death masks looked more Europoid and they liked to tattoo themselves like the Pazyryk people. They first appeared around the 1st century AD and I suppose there is a possibility that some members were originally Indo-Iranian. They lived near the Yenisei river in Siberia and at some stage the Issedones according to some geographers controlled this region. Could a lot of them have been absorbed by other tribes and peoples over time. I also read in a recent book that the ancestors of the Akhal-teke horses were also bred by the Massagetae who just happened to be the neighbours of the Issedones/Wusun.
http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestu...rior-race/
Regards
Michael Kerr
Michael Kerr
Michael Kerr
"You can conquer an empire from the back of a horse but you can't rule it from one"
"You can conquer an empire from the back of a horse but you can't rule it from one"
