04-08-2017, 03:55 PM
Just on the language of the region Di Cosmo in his paper The Tarim city-states wrote that military leaders and “interpreters” were especially important in the Tarim region. Multilingualism was an important feature, in a society where a complex linguistic picture is far from having been clarified, but it is certain that lndo-European languages were spoken, such as Tocharian and ancient Iranian. Given the presence of Altaic nomadic groups coming from the east like the Hsiung-nu, and of the relations with Sinitic speakers from China and merchants from Greek-speaking communities in Central Asia and possibly merchants from India the interpreters occupied a prominent position in the governments of the various city-states of the Tarim Basin at least from around the time of the Han. Speaking of Mair Di Cosmo points to a 2 Volume book comprising a series of papers contributed by a number of authors and edited by Mair "The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Central Asia". At 912 pages it is pretty extensive.
A tad pricy though, the cheapest I can see is $99 US at Amazon for a used copy but a lot more expensive at other sites.
Volume 1 covers Archaeology, Migration and Nomadism Linguistics
Volume 2 covers Genetics, Physical Anthropology, Metallurgy, Textiles, Geography, Climatology, History, Mythology and Ethnology
A tad pricy though, the cheapest I can see is $99 US at Amazon for a used copy but a lot more expensive at other sites.
Regards
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"