Akshay Sarathi

Based on synthesizing models drawn from World and Big History, this book project uses archaeological, historical, genetic, and ethnographic evidence to study African participation in the Silk Roads. Narratives of the Silk Roads written thus far silence African agency and participation. By centering African histories in Silk Roads narratives, this project overturns established paradigms by studying Africa as one of the most important trading, cultural, and religious zones of the world. African participation in the Silk Roads united societies within the continent to each other and Eurasia through commerce, religion, conquest, and enslavement. This book will show that our understandings of the Silk Roads have thus far remained incomplete by not taking considering African agency and histories.