随着中国的崛起,历史学家们开始专注于这样一个疑问:我们的世界——统一的中国和破碎的欧洲——是否以某种方式延续了罗马帝国和汉帝国的经验?耶稣诞生时,地球上大约有一半的人口都生活在两大帝国中。但他们自己并没有意识到这个事实:远离大城市的农民很难接触到外面的世界,他们只能了解到有限、失真的信息。这是世界历史上空前绝后的情况。罗马帝国和汉帝国大致同时兴起,其统治的人口也大体相当:在鼎盛时期,罗马帝国有 With the rise of China, historians began to focus on the question whether our world - unified China and fragmented Europe - somehow continued the experience of the Roman Empire and the Han Empire? When Jesus was born, About half of the world’s population lives in two empires. But they themselves were unaware of the fact that peasants who were far from the big cities had a hard time approaching the outside world and they could only learn limited and distorted messages. This is an unprecedented situation in world history. At roughly the same time as the Roman Empire and the Han Empire, the ruling population had roughly the same proportions: in its heyday the Roman Empire had