KABUL, Afghanistan – If there was ever one “foreign devil” on the Silk Road who most fascinates amateur history buffs, it must be Sir Marc Aurel Stein.
The Hungarian-born British archaeologist’s career sparked an obsession of mine – and no doubt of countless others – with the history of the Silk Road, a series of trade routes linking China to the Mediterranean.
So upon hearing Stein was buried in Kabul, I made a beeline for his gravesite as soon as I arrived here.
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| The British Cemetery sits on a dusty road in central Kabul. |
A race for ancient artifacts
Born in 1862, an era when archaeologists could still raise funds for lavish expeditions and gallivant about the globe, Stein single-handedly put the Silk Road back on the map, as it were, with a series of incredible discoveries in his later life.
The fruits of his excavations and scholarship shed new light on the region by tracing the original trading routes along the Silk Road and, most importantly, documenting the spread of Buddhism from India to China.
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