Context

This project has had problems getting off the ground. I finished reading Origin Story back in January 2025, but I didn’t do much in the way of taking notes — if I did, I’ve since lost them. I no longer have the book as I borrowed it from the library, so no marginalia either. It’s a faint memory that starts at the big bang. One day, I’ll read it again.

However, rather than restarting, I’ll forge ahead and make the best of this. I started reading the fascinating Silk Roads at the beginning of December 2025, and I still have about 125 pages left, which is no fault of the author’s but rather my transient reading habits, which I love and hate in that I get to keep picking up new things, but then I don’t finish them. Trying to stick to a single thread with this project.

At first I thought Silk Roads was basically “eastern civilization world history”, which is not incorrect, but it is incomplete. For me, a westerner, the big pay off comes in the later half of the book when I start recognizing western names and places but continue to see that the driver of power rests in the east. Whether it was Alexander the Great, Mongols, or Hitler, they all knew that the action was in the east, and the center of power wasn’t about who had the strongest military, but who controlled the trading routes which shifted from land to sea to not really making a difference: whoever controlled the oil was going to be able to feed their military machines and have the leverage to control business.