The Lost Farmers of Amazon

Weekly Jarlig #4 – Your fresh scoop of history and archaeology

Hey, history buffs!

Welcome to another edition of the Weekly Jarlig, your go-to source for the latest updates from history’s frontlines.

Before we dive into the newsletter, I hope you had a chance to catch my exclusive post on the Battle of the Talas River and the epic journey of paper across the Silk Road. Here are some of the key highlights from the post which you may have missed:

• The invention of paper in China, discussing the traditional narratives and archaeological evidence.

• Analysis of the geopolitical situation in the early 8th century that led to Tang China and the Umayyad Caliphate locking horns in Central Asia.

• The Abbasid revolution, the overthrow of the Umayyad Caliphate, and the new Arab push to control the lucrative Silk Road cities in the early 750s.

• How paper technology reached Baghdad was refined and then spread to Europe.

• Improvements in papermaking, the invention of the movable printing press, and their impact on the spread of knowledge.

Last month, I summarized the top…