Communication in Middle East and Abroad

The great continental Eurasian landmass, with its vast steppes stretching east to west in a more or less uniform climatic belt, has been a useful path for the transit of ideas and techniques throughout history, with what is now the Arab world as the fulcrum of the exchange between China and Europe. Over roughly the first thirteen or fourteen centuries of the Common Era, there was a slow, steady diffusion of ideas and, particularly, technology from East to West.