China Sea connected together East, South, and West Asia and Africa and
Europe. As the peoples who lived around the ocean’s shore became inte-
grated into this system, many prospered, although not equally. Different
parts of the zone experiencedfluctuations based on local and regional con-
ditions. Trade balances shifted, opportunities changed as new products
became available, and new markets materialized while old ones withered.
Trade among the peoples of the Indian Ocean was well under way by the
Neolithic as was trade between the coasts and the interior. Products such as
mother-of-pearl, unusual shells, and shell columellae cut into lamps, cups,
and beads were much in demand far inland. Thefirst direct long-distance
maritime trading system goes back to the Sumerians and Harappans, but
longer distance indirect contact also took place. The remains of cloves, which
were produced only in the Moluccas Islands of eastern Indonesia on the
border of the Pacific Ocean, have been found 5,000 miles to the west, in a
pot excavated on the Euphrates River in Mesopotamia dated to 1700– 1600
BCE, and peppercorns from India were in the mummy of Pharaoh Ramses II,
who died in 1213BCE.
The core of the Indian Ocean commercial zone was India itself, which
constituted a vast internal trade network reaching northward into Central
Asia. Following the eclipse of the Harappans, India experienced a period
during which the center of gravity shifted to the east and eventually to the
south. By the latefirst millenniumBCE, India had reemerged as an economic
powerhouse; Strabo called it“the greatest of all nations and the happiest in
lot.”From west to eastfive major exporting regions would dominate: the
Indus delta, the Gujarat peninsula and Narmada valley, the Malabar coast on
the southwest, the Coromandel coast on the southeast, and the Ganges delta
in the northeast. The caste system, which was still in the process of devel-
oping, would ultimately discourage or even prohibit upper castes, particu-
larly Brahmans, from traveling overseas for fear they would become ritually
contaminated. Apparently this proscription was not yet strong enough,
however, to dampen the ambitions of many Indians, Brahmans or otherwise,
from seeking gain through trade and travel.
Early vessels in the Indian Ocean and its corridors were a mixed lot, and
different areas developed different types ranging from small boats barely
more seaworthy than riverboats to large ocean-going ships. Two pictures of
boats from the Harappan period show one with masts and oar-like rudders
and one made from bundles of reeds without a mast. Thefirst Egyptian
boats on the Red Sea were made of papyrus. Pliny reports that on the
southwest coast of India pepper was brought from producing districts to
major ports in canoes made of hollowed tree trunks. Strabo mentions leather
boats on the tip of southwestern Arabia, and Pliny tells of Arab pirates using
buoyed rafts consisting of a platform held up by inflated skins, often ox
bladders. The trip from the Ganges delta across the Bay of Bengal to Ceylon,
according to Pliny, was at one time done in reed boats, and Onesicritus, who
When India was the center of the world 85