ABSTRACT
This chapter tackles the first set of issues in the effort to put globalization into historical perspective: the distinction between undeniable and interesting interregional contacts emerging early in the agricultural phase of human history, and the fact that these contacts cannot be construed, by any plausible stretch of the imagination, as constituting a preliminary form of globalization. The principal focus of the great classical civilizations, like Persia, India, or Rome, centered on expanding internal regional contacts, not in building connections further afield. These connections did emerge, rather tentatively, but they must be sketched carefully, without exaggerating their importance and without so eroding an understanding of later, more decisive changes that globalization becomes a process virtually coterminous most of recorded world history. Exchange of silk from China westward began as a result of growing contacts and tensions with nomadic peoples in western China/central Asia.
