Hey everyone. This is Gary. I'm off this week traveling and attending a conference and while I'm away I've lined up some vintage episodes and deep cuts that most of you probably haven't heard before and even if you have heard, a refresher never hurts.

I'll be back again with brand new episodes on January 30th.

2,000 years ago, the Han Empire in China and the Roman Empire in Europe were the two greatest

empires in the world. Between them, they covered an enormous amount of the Earth's surface

and a large percentage of the world's population. But were these two great empires even aware of each other?

If so, was there any contact between them?

Find out how these two great ancient empires interacted with each other on this episode

of Everything Everywhere Daily. Before I should say that whenever we talk about the ancient world there's a lot we just don't know

Most of the writings we have from this time were written down hundreds of years after the events took place and of the things that were written down the vast majority of them have been lost to history.

So what we have is a scattering of documents and whatever archaeologists might find.

That being said, there is ample evidence that China and Rome knew about each other, but it doesn't mean they knew very much.

What they knew mostly consisted of rumors, legend, and stories.

There is little evidence of any direct contact between the two empires.

Not only were they separated by enormous distances with deserts, mountains, and seas between them,

but they also had some very large and powerful kingdoms and empires between them.

In particular, the Parthian Empire, which consisted of much of what is today Iran and Iraq.

The Parthians had a very lucrative business in serving as middlemen between China and Rome.

Most land trade routes pass through their territory as they controlled all the land

between the Caspian Sea and the Indian Ocean.

If you traveled by sea, you'd have to stop in one of their ports if you wanted to avoid an open ocean crossing between India and the Arabian Peninsula, which few ships at the time were willing to do.

To look at what they knew of each other, let's start with the Chinese and what they knew about the Romans.

Most of what we know about Chinese views of Rome come from a document called the Wei Liu, which was written by the historian Yu Juan during the three kingdoms period between 239 and 265

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