Other, more general details are introduced whenever the opportunity arises -- how both the Bactrian camel and its single-humped Arabian cousin have double-lidded eyes and the
ability to close their nostrils against flying sand, how the older camels would stop and paw the ground at the sites of underground water, and how their cameleers -- often Chinese -- wore shoes soled partly with paper and lined with soft red cloth. The author knows so much detail of this kind that she can't help unloading it at the slightest provocation.
The result is that, despite the organization by "tales," the book is not really very different from conventional histories of social life. There's one chapter on religious life, another on the arts, and so on, both centered round a historical figure fleshed out with details from other people who crop up in the ancient texts. Thus the chapter entitled The Courtesan's Tale, though set in the city of Kucha on the northern Silk Road in the 9th century AD, in effect discourses on the lives of women in general in Central Asia, using digressions as a means of introducing the additional material.
Whitfield admits the book has a Chinese bias, both because she was trained as a China historian, and because China's was the only empire in the region existing at both the start and end of the first millennium AD. In fact, she limits herself in this volume to the period AD 750 to 1000. After that time the Silk Road went into decline. Perhaps the level of the water table dropped, perhaps populations declined, she says. Either way, the sea routes from China's ports replaced it, and sands began to cover the old towns. Only recently was the road's huge historical importance rediscovered.
One moral springs to mind. Wars plagued the region in the period described, but now their causes are forgotten, and dunes once fought over shift unregarded in the wind. Today there is conflict again, but this time the nuclear weapons that might one day be used could render the land radioactive for many thousands of years. Once again, before long, few will remember why men fought there. Who was this Bin Laden? Why did foreigners seek him out? But the damage wrought will, if the wrong decisions are made, not be so easily forgotten.
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