I Was NOT Prepared To Fall Down A 4-Hour Rabbit Hole After Reading These Wild, Obscure History Facts

—u/BuddhaKekz

Context: Much of what we know comes from two key sources. On the Mediterranean side, The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (mid-first century CE) was written by a Greek-speaking Egyptian merchant living under Roman rule. While the author himself traveled only as far as India, the text refers to lands farther east, including a place called “Thinae,” generally understood to mean China, based on reports circulating through Indian Ocean trade networks.

On the Chinese side, the Hou Hanshu (Book of the Later Han) records that in 166 CE, envoys claiming to represent “Andun, king of Daqin” — likely the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus — arrived at the court of Emperor Huan. They came by sea via Rinan (in modern-day Vietnam), bearing luxury goods such as ivory, rhinoceros horn, and tortoise shell. Most historians believe these were not official diplomats but Greco-Roman merchants operating out of Roman Egypt or Syria, traveling through Southeast Asian maritime routes.

By this point, Greece was part of the Roman Empire, so these traders would have been Roman subjects from Hellenized ports rather than ethnically identifiable Greeks. Even so, their journeys demonstrate that people from the Mediterranean world were reaching the edges of East Asia by boat, following coastlines and trade routes that spanned continents.

Source: The Periplus Maris Erythraei, Hou Hanshu, trans. John E. Hill, Journal of Asian History