George Meszoly

Wednesdays, February 17 - April 14 (not March 31)   10:00 a.m - 12:00 noon    
8 sessions     Church of the Advent, enter on Mt. Vernon St.

“I wonder what the vintners buy,
One half so precious as the stuff they sell.”
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Along the Silk Road, the greatest highway of goods and information before the Industrial Age, many different peoples and societies, focusing on their own needs and wants, contributed to the trade and transport of goods across the widest land mass in the world. In addition to looking at the “stuff” that passed both east and west along this multi-branched highway, we will examine the incredible variety of civilizations that have risen, fallen and replaced each other along this route; from the earliest unification of China to the growth of the steppe nomads of Asia, the “gatekeeper” kingdoms and empires of the middle east, the “gold drain” problem of Rome and a host of other events that influenced or were influenced by this trade.
While this course is a reprise of an earlier version, it will not be a replica.

Schafer, Edward H., The Golden Peaches of Samarkand
Polo, Marco, The Travels of Marco Polo
Any of the Amazon “Silk Road” books.

George Meszoly is a graduate of Harvard College in Linguistics and Far Eastern Languages and of Columbia University in Linguistics and Uralic Languages. He has been leading courses at BHS for several semesters.