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From: Harold
Category: Books
Date: 29 September 2004
Mapping the Silk Road and Beyond, 2,000 years of exploring the east by Kenneth Nebenzahl published by phaidon
This is the kind of book that a young English man, brave and keen with the spirit to conquer and oppress, might enjoy to muse over dreaming of when the world was undiscovered waiting and ready for exploitation. It is a chronology of the development of maps as trade route were developed from west to east, of the discovery of ‘new lands’ as explorers ‘overcame enormous difficulties’. A beautiful glorification of the beginning of the oppression of peoples which must have been quite exciting.Dull to say it. Most of the maps are drawn by Europeans and then I think there are a couple of Chinese maps as well.
It is a beautiful book, the paper is a convincing version of what the originals might have felt like, but smoother and neater. I enjoyed looking at the pictures, some times reminiscent of Paul Noble or Where’s Wally books with detailed illustrations of creatures and people, a camel suckling from its mother, elephants, some one I think is Jesus sitting in a tree, horses charging with their riders with swords out stretched and lots of small writing which I didn’t understand. The maps are quite absorbing and alas like a child with a picture book I read little of the text though I believe the author to be very well researched in his area. He will be lecturing somewhere in the USA later this month, the book will be out in November
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