Sino Iranica

In this major study - regarded as his most important work - the pioneering anthropologist, Berthold Laufer documents the cultural transfers that took place between China and Iran in ancient times. He does so by tracing the history of cultivated plants, drugs, products, minerals, metals, precious stones and textiles, in their migration from Persia to China and from China to Persia. Walnut, peach, apricot and olive, as well as more exotic products like jasmine, henna, indigo, lapis lazuli, amber, coral, gold, ebony, zinc and myrrh are all included. Few other publications provide so much informative detail about the way human activity has modified the natural world through the movement of plants and other natural resource products from one historical civilisation to another. The work also offers important detail on Iran for periods when Iranian sources are slim. Introduced by Brian Spooner, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, this classic work is once more available for all scholars of Iran, China and cultural exchange.

Excerpt from Sino-Iranica: Chinese Contributions to the History of Civilization in Ancient Iran, With Special Reference to the History of Cultivated Plants and Products The following pages represent Chinese contributions to the history of civilization in Iran, which aptly fill a lacune in our knowledge of Iranian tradition. Chinese records dealing with the history of Iranian peoples also contain numerous transcriptions of ancient Iranian words. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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