The Silk Road, which started in the 2nd century BC in China, spreads culture and technology, and is an important testimony to the development of human civilization. In 2013, my country proposed to build the Silk Road Economic Belt. In 2014, the Ancient Silk Road successfully applied for the World Cultural Heritage.
China’s emphasis on science and technology began formally in modern times. So how did the scientific and technological exchanges between China and other civilizations proceed on the ancient Silk Road? The exchange of science and technology must first be attributed to walking between the two civilizations. People. Part of them are business travelers engaged in trade, and the other part are official envoys. The Sogdians living between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya are a group of merchants who are good at cross-border trade active on the ancient Silk Road. They are not only merchants travelling to and from Asia and Europe, but also the technological culture of the East and the West on the Silk Road. The messenger of the spread.
One of the technologies they brought to the Central Plains was wine-making technology. From 329 to 323 BC, following the Alexander’s Eastern Expeditions, the Greek civilization was brought into Central Asia. The Sogdians came into contact with wine and slowly began to grow grapes and make wine. Soon wine became a Sogdian diet. An important part of culture. When the Sogdians entered Pingcheng, the capital of the Northern Wei Dynasty, to meet the imperial family and do business, they also brought grape planting and wine-making techniques to the Central Plains. At the same time, envoys often bring gifts for local rulers. These gifts are also representative of the technological achievements of the country where the messenger is located. For example, the records of this period of "Wei Shu" prove that my country's glass manufacturing technology comes from the Persian envoys who sent to China. In the early years of the Tang Dynasty, Wang Xuance was sent to India on many occasions, and selected professional Indian sugar workers to teach sugar craftsmanship in China. The scientific and technological exchanges on the ancient Silk Road were not all carried out in a peaceful and friendly atmosphere. While the war brought pain, it also brought cultural and technological exchanges. The Battle of Talus, which took place in the territory of Kazakhstan in the tenth year of Trimble, is one of the more representative wars. The two warring parties were the Tang Dynasty during the Xuanzong Period of the Tang Dynasty and the Abbasid Dynasty from the Great Food Empire. After the military conflict between the two sides, a large number of soldiers of the Tang army became captives of the Arab army. These soldiers of the Tang Dynasty who came to the Arab region spread China's mature papermaking technology, smelting technology and related weapon manufacturing technology to the Arabs.
In addition, books have carried the mission of cultural exchanges and technological exchanges from the very beginning. Naturally, the scientific and technological exchanges on the Silk Road are also indispensable for its credit. For example, during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, He Chengtian's "Yuan Jia Li" was based on solid knowledge of traditional Chinese calendars and absorbed the advanced elements of Indian astronomical calendars derived from Indian Buddhist materials.
In the middle of the 13th century, Genghis Khan’s grandson Hulagu summoned the best Arab scientists to his court, and built a large-scale observatory containing a library of 400,000 volumes in Malague.
Kublai Khan once introduced astronomy books written by scientists in Baghdad and Cairo to China. The "Perpetual Calendar", a traditional Arabic calendar dedicated to Kublai by the Arab scholar Zamarudin, became an important reference for Guo Shoujing's "Shoushi Calendar" which was called one of the peaks of ancient Chinese calendars by later historians.
In recent years, the value of the Silk Road has been paid more and more attention. This is our country's inheritance and development of history and culture. Hope that the glory of history will continue to illuminate the beautiful vision of mankind's peaceful development and win-win exchanges.