The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

nothing more than what some historians have called “a tissue of exaggerations, misconceptions and outright lies.”

Hitherto, Buddhists had actively refrained from visual representations; competition now forced them to react, to borrow and to innovate.27

All the riches of the Indian Ocean, the Caspian or the Black Sea, he wrote, could not make up for what had been swept away.65

As a child, be well-behaved. As a youth, be self-controlled. As an adult, be just. As an elder, be wise. As one dying, be without pain.24

All the lands from the rising to the setting sun are subject to me, he went on, which did little to recommend the Pope’s God.

The new arrivals might have admired the idyllic and naive characteristics of the people they encountered, but they were also proud of their instruments of death, which had evolved from centuries of near-incessant fighting against both Muslims and neighbouring Christian kingdoms in Europe.42

In the Inca lands, wrote Pedro de Cieza de Léon, law and order were carefully maintained, with great care taken “to see that justice was meted out and that nobody ventured to commit a felony or theft.”64 Data was collected annually across the Inca Empire to make sure taxes were calculated correctly and fairly paid, with births and deaths recorded c

tetchy

These values to some extent inhibited growth: as a general rule, teaching and stipulations about legacies meant that families found it hard to accumulate capital over successive generations because inheritance was progressive and egalitarian; in Europe, primogeniture concentrated resources in the hands of one child, and paved the way for great fort