Middle East and South Asia: How separate are they?

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Middle East and South Asia How separate are they?
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They are regions of Asia
CaucasusIraqWest Cent AsiaIranTarim
BasinAltai MoutainsGobi DesertMongolia-AmurNor
th ChinaHindu KushIndus Basin Ganga BasinBurma
to Vietnam
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and more broadly, of Afro-Eurasia (the world
region that Marshall Hodgson considers the vast
historic homeland of what he calls Islamicate
cultures).
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Early urban civilization sites at Harappa (Indus
Valley, now in Pakistan) were connected by trade
and migration to Mesopotamia and Mediterranean
Basin
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Indo-European languages spread with ancient
migrations across western and southern Asia
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Many routes of mobility well documented and
influential across Afro-Eurasia by 1500 were
alive and well 2000 years earlier
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Routes interconnected regions of Afro-Eurasia by
land and sea. They carried all the elements of
culture in various directions.

• Ancient silk road and Marco Polos route

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ltSpread of Buddhism 300BCE-300AD

• Spread of Black Plague, circa 1300

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Alexander the Great followed trade routes to
India, fought and lost battles in the Hindu Kush,
and died in retreat in Iran
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He lost to Mauryan armies dispatched from the
eastern imperial heartland of the Ganga River
basin.
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Indias first empire marched west in the 4th
century BC as Alexander marched west The
Mauryan Empire rose on the eastern Ganga edge of
routes extending across Iran to the Mediterranean
marked by competitors for territorial control
over routes of mobility.
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The stupa at Sanchi is one of the oldest of the
surviving monuments from the Buddhist period.
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but the homeland of Buddhism was always on the
move in various directions
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Empire in South Asia was always a moveable feast,

• moving along routes of trade and cultural
  exchange

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and compelled substantially by nomadic
warrior-herder-merchants who migrated to conquer
settled sites of intensive agricultural
development dependent on river water supplies
along routes of trade and cultural mobility in
one vast differentiated region of Afro-Eurasia
always connected to the Middle East.