I’ve always been excited by the thought that there might be other universes, other versions of ourselves out there somewhere. Modern science-fiction has made a killing with CGI renditions of what some of those alternate realities might look like. I mean, if I’m like I am here, what might I look like, how might I sound, and what might my priorities be if the world around me—indeed the universe around me—was completely different than the one I know?
While the concept is fun to play around with, the reality behind it is far more interesting, I think. The simple truth is there already are parallel versions of the world . . . here . . . on our own planet. Now, I’m not talking about the infinite bank of monitors from “The Matrix”, displaying every possible response to any given input. But there are places, far from where we each live, learn, and grow, that are vastly different from anything we know. And for the people who live in those far-off lands, our world, our culture, is as alien as theirs seems to us.
To make the point, I could go to any of a hundred locations here on earth today, but the politics of our modern, perhaps overly-connected world, mean that can easily be seen as political or inciting further angst. And if we need less of anything in the world right now, its angst! So instead, I’ll dig deep into history and use an example of parallel worlds from . . . let’s say . . . 109 BC.
The year 109 BC saw a Roman Republic fresh from its final victory over Carthage, ending 120 years of on-again, off-again warfare with the North African state. That period saw a Rome on the rise, throwing the weight of its battle-hardened legions in all directions, beginning to etch the outlines of what would become an empire.
But they weren’t there yet. Victory over Carthage had brought indescribable wealth to the Roman Republic, to say nothing of a seemingly never-ending line of slaves, beginning the rot that would eventually eat away at the social fabric of the state. But that’s a discussion for another time. More to the point, Rome destroyed the Illyrian Kingdom in 168 BC, annexed Macedonia in 148, conquered what was left of Greece in 146, brought the Celt-Iberian tribes of Hispania to heel in 133, and fought against the Germanic Cimbri in Northern Italy in 113. And despite being bogged down in a Vietnam-style war with Jugurtha’s Numidians in the unforgiving terrain of modern Algeria, the Roman Republic was at a high point, expanding in all directions as the wealth—and the slaves—continued to pour in.
Growing up on a steady diet of Roman movies, mini-series, and TV shows, most Americans and Europeans have a working familiarity with the sights, sounds, and feel of that unique period in Roman history. Routine use of concrete in the construction of multi-story apartment buildings, government facilities faced with marble, togas and sandals, temples to Roman and Greek deities attended by solemn-looking priests, slaves everywhere, wine in abundance . . . ahhhh . . . I can almost smell the dormice roasting! If you’re having a hard time imagining any of these I’d highly recommend the HBO series “Rome” as it does a pretty good job of portraying that world for a modern audience. Regardless, we have a pretty good handle on what life looked like during that critical period in Roman and, frankly, Western history. After all, so much of what they accomplished contributed to the world we live in still today.
And we can easily visit these sites, right? I’ve strolled through the forum of Rome, climbed the Aventine Hill, entered the Flavian Amphitheater that we call the colosseum, and gawked at the Circus Maximus. Some of those places even found their way into the first and third Fulvius novels, after all. The point being, we can visualize that world, to a certain degree, and with a little imagination see ourselves wearing a tunic and sandals, scribbling with a wooden stylus as we wait for friends to go watch a chariot race.
On the other side of the world, China’s many kingdoms had unified once more under a central authority in 202 BC, only the second time that had happened. The Han Dynasty had conquered its way to hegemony in the wake of the chaos left behind by the short-lived Qin, establishing an empire encompassing the eastern half of what would become modern China. Yet the Han too were on a roll, fast reaching a dynastic high-water mark from which decline and the dissolution of the empire eventually followed.
109 BC was a pivotal year in that other universe as well, as the Han Empire conducted the first of many Chinese invasions of a Korean state, in this case, the Kingdom of Gojoseon. A Han vassal named She He assassinated a Gojoseon vassal, leading to invasion and retribution by the growing Korean state. The invasion and subsequent execution of She He, while no doubt satisfying to Gojoseon, set the stage for Han’s Emperor Wu to retaliate. Wu ordered a two-pronged invasion of Gojoseon by land and sea but the attack failed, forcing the Chinese to retreat, much to the satisfaction of King Ugeo of Gojoseon. Neither he nor Wu could foresee at the time that a renewed Han effort the following year would be disastrous for the growing Korean kingdom. For the moment, Ugeo had weathered the storm and could dream of pushing west against his Chinese foe.
That same year the Han conquered vast areas of Yunnan to the south and won a series of battles in the Tarim Basin in the far northwest. Like the Roman Republic, the Han Empire was on the move in 109 BC, expanding in all directions at once, rapidly approaching the limits by which posterity would come to identify its efforts.
Yet, unlike our toga-wearing friends, we generally have little feel for what life was like for the people who lived through those equally dramatic, traumatic, and significant times. Sure, watching Chinese movies and the like on Netflix, one can be deluded into thinking we have some sense for how things looked, sounded, and otherwise felt, but the themes are extremely limited, with little effort made by storytellers to fill in the huge blanks in our understanding of such things.
Worse, of course, with a lack of historical input, Hollywood, when it does touch on the subject, does so in the comic book manner of the movie “300”, which some of you have no doubt heard me refer to as “Lord of the Rings in Greece”. Tired stereotypes abound, armor and horse trappings are utterly ridiculous, and people fly along tree-tops to beat one another with bamboo staves. There has been no effort made to help us comprehend what that society and those people felt at the time. This contributes to a concept already beaten into us in grade school that nothing worth noting in history took place very far from the Mediterranean Sea. And so we can’t really imagine ourselves living, loving, and raising a family in Ancient China . . . or Korea, Japan, Mongolia, India, or a hundred other places, each with its own unique culture and history.
In 109 BC the Han capital of Luoyang was home to over half a million people, making it just a little smaller than the Rome we so revere. The people who made the Han Empire a living thing, eked out existences in cities, towns, and villages. They worried about the health and welfare of sons sent to war in far off Gojoseon just like the Roman mother who offered prayers for the safe return of hers from Numidia. That other world, that parallel universe, if you will, was just as vibrant, just as important to those who lived through it, and yet we seem to act as if it never existed at all.
Yet the Han Dynasty created the silk road, inaugurating the first real link between East and West that dominated cultural and economic exchange for the next 1600 years. Wealthy Roman wives wore silk robes and sported jade jewelry only because of the existence of the Chinese and other East Asian cultures of which they knew absolutely nothing about. For them it was as if those wonderous materials somehow manifested from thin air.
Today we should know better. Every bit of world news every single day reminds us that what happens on the other side of the world can affect us at home where we live. Yet somehow when we study history, we seem to forget that fact and generally place each historical event in its own neat little box. This event is Chinese history. That one goes in the Roman box. This looks like something for the Persian tray. Never mind that all of human history screams to us that there are no boxes, that each of those events affected and influenced the ones around them in ways that are clear once we pull them out and place them on a single human timeline.
Those other histories and the cultures they helped create are worth studying, if for no other reason than to understand the influences that affected our own culture. As well, of course, they offer insight into dealing with the people who co-habit our world. To continue ignoring those parallel worlds—and there are a lot of them—is to live a life of intentional ignorance. Frankly, there’s more than enough accidental ignorance already in the world and I see no reason to add to it.
The solution? Read . . . read . . . and read some more. Shocking advice, I know, coming from a writer, but there it is.
M. G. Haynes