British archaeologist Marc Aurel Stein, who made four major expeditions to Central Asia between 1900 and 1930 and recovered artifacts from several lost cultures along the historical Silk Trail, was born in Budapest on this date in 1862. Stein became a British citizen in 1904 and was based in India. His expeditions, which were extraordinarily taxing for a man of his age and small physical stature (he lost several toes to frostbite), helped to map and extend the influence of the modern British Empire and got him knighted. In China’s Cave of the Thousand Buddhas, Stein discovered and acquired through bribery the Diamond Sutra, the world’s oldest surviving, dated text (printed by woodblock), along with thousands of other historical treasures that he delivered to the British Museum; he is still denounced in modern China for his looting of the caves. Sir Stein also conducted some of the first archaeological surveys of Iran and Iraq, and pioneered, in the 1920s, the use of aerial photography in archaeology. “Archaeology was close enough, in those days, to its treasure-hunting origins for him to return with fabulous finds . . . and old-fashioned imperialism was strong enough that all his archaeology was accompanied by detailed map-making, the results of which went straight to the British army. . . . But Stein was infinitely more than a treasure-hunter and British pawn . . . he was a genuine archaeologist, led to his sites by carefully considering all the textual evidence he could lay hands on . . .” —Cosma Shalizi
November 26, 1862: Rediscovering the silk trail
