Ok. I'm reading a book on the GOBI DESERT, right? There should be nothing in here related to Rome, Western Europe or even the Indo-European language group (aside from the odd mention of the Silk Road), right?! It's the middle of Outer Mongolia.
Alas. King Midas.
The last chapter of John Man's Gobi: Tracking the Desert opens with the story behind a road named, "the Road of the King with the Ass' Ears" and as he starts telling it... I'm thinking, hang on a sec. Take out the daughter of the barber and swap in the reeds for the field-mice and it's one of the Midas myths. Man does not state outright if the myth was a Turkish original grafted onto the Greek or if it was a story which migrated from west to east along the Silk Road but... Yeesh! There really is no escape, is there?
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