the mediterranean and the indian ocean 459
the indirect linking of the Mediterranean with the Indian Ocean (Gills and
Frank, 1993: 88–90). Janet Abu-Lughod draws a series of interlocking circuits,
or subsystems, that comprised what she describes as the mid-thirteenth to
mid- fourteenth-century world system that bound together Afro–Eurasia: the
Mediterranean and/or Indian Ocean are directly included in all but one, namely
the central Eurasian circuit from the Black Sea to the East China Sea ( Abu-Lughod,
1989: 34). Whether trans-thalassality, Gills and Frank’s “nexus corridors,” or
Abu-Lughod’s subsystems/circuits, the centrality of Mediterranean and Indian
Ocean connectivity to an understanding of broader Afro–Eurasian networks across
millennia becomes clear.
The theriac of Mithridates of Pontus, first-century bce challenger to Roman
authority in the region of the Black Sea, offers an early recipe for this trans-thalassal
exchange along “nexus corridors” and between overlapping circuits. This prophylac-
tic against poisoning is a catalog of spices that required the connectivity of the Black
Sea, Mediterranean, and Indian Ocean: iris from Illyria (region of north-west Balkan
peninsula connected to Black Sea via the Danube), carrot seeds from Crete (island in
the Mediterranean), frankincense and myrrh from southern Arabia, and from India,
cassia, long pepper, storax, malabathron, and cinnamon (Celsus, de Medicina: 5.23.3).
Another unusual Roman-period source, a parchment fragment (c. 260 ce) covering a
Roman infantryman’s shield found at Dura Europus on the Euphrates, displays in
map-like form the north-west portion of the Black Sea with ships and named ports
(Dilke, 1987: 249–250). That a soldier at an encampment on the Euphrates
( connected via the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea) would feature on his shield a map,
which some have interpreted as a reminder of the route he and fellow troops had
taken, connotes a high degree of potential trans-thalassal connection in the third
century ce. Indeed, by the height of Roman imperial power, the Black Sea, Arabian
Sea, and Mediterranean were linked in such a way that Southwest Asia had become
the central node of a thriving nexus of exchange running along a fairly limited east-
west latitudinal axis. By the mid-second millennium ce—when Portuguese explorers/
soldiers such as Vasco da Gama and Afonso de Albuquerque opened up all sea routes
that circumnavigated the African continent and helped to establish a Portuguese trad-
ing empire in the Indian Ocean—the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Indian Ocean
became connected in such a way that placed Africa as a central node of a much broader
trans-thalassal network that tied together much of the eastern hemisphere, and soon
thereafter, the globe.
Sources for Mediterranean and Indian Ocean interactionA range of evidence supplies the picture of exchange between the Indian Ocean and
the Mediterranean Sea over time. Archaeological evidence—seals, etched carnelian
beads, lapis lazuli, and shell from the Harappan civilization of the Indus Valley
and found at Mesopotamian sites, as well as inscriptions at Ur—suggest a degree of
connectivity as early as the third millennium bce (Ratnagar, 1981). Coins, glass, and
pottery from the first century supply additional evidence for Roman–Indian trade
connections (Begley and de Puma, 1991 and Cimino, 1994). Not until the mid-first
millennium bce do extant written texts begin to offer clues about direct Mediterranean
and Indian Ocean interaction.