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People are more interconnected today than ever before (no doubt) yet I’m always impressed by the tangled networks that have linked far-flung places, people, and their things throughout human history. Here are some of my favorite examples: (1/8)
1. Chinese barbers in Mexico. The Spanish conquered Tenochtitlan (later, Mexico City) in 1520. Within a century, one of the thriving communities that had developed were the Chinese barbers. >200 barbers set up in Plaza Mayor, providing trims, blood-letting, and dentistry. (2/8)
2. Malagasy. 5k-3.5k years ago, a seafaring ppl left Taiwan. They quickly spread through SE Asia and Oceania, becoming (in part) the Indonesians, Micronesians, Polynesians — and the Malagasy of Madagascar! Yep, 1st colonists of Madagascar were Asians from Borneo ~1.5-2kya. (3/8) 
3. Sea cucumber market. Before Euros arrived in Australia, aboriginal Australians traded sea cucumbers with merchants from Indonesia, who then sold them to the Chinese. North Australian languages thus have SE Asian loanwords, such as for white person and money (rupiah). (4/8)
4. Malaria in America. Malaria wasn’t referenced in the lit of Aztecs & Mayans & was probably brought to America by Europeans and West African slaves. @CharlesCMann reviewed evidence that people relied so heavily on African slaves because of Africans’ resistance to malaria. (5/8)
5. The halo. Eastern religions (Buddhism, Hinduism) and Abrahamic religions (Islam, Christianity) have borrowed from each other for more than a thousand years. One example is the halo — as far back as 600 AD, Iranian traders seemed to have carried halo imagery across Asia. (6/8)
6. N. Letters have tangled histories. “N”, for example, began as the Egyptian hieroglyph snake, which stood for the J-sound (Egyptian word for snake was “djet”). Semitic ppl (probably) borrowed it for the N-sound before it transmitted to Greeks, Etruscans, and then Romans. (7/8)
I’m a Punjabi dude who grew up in NJ & lives in a state named for an Algonquin people, listening to Bavarian techno and typing circum-Mediterranean letters on a computer assembled in China. But this cultural goulash isn’t new. Interaction, not fixedness, defines history! (8/8)
