The Different Personalities of the Silk Road Countries - Kristin Romey

In popular culture, the field of archaeology requires someone to be equal parts adventurer, crime-fighter and scientist. But in reality, Kristin Romey says, “archaeology is smelly, boring work,” and has very few “Indiana Jones” moments. Romey has done much of her archaeology piecing together pottery found in the Mediterranean Sea near Turkey, waiting for sea life to dry out before she can study the shards that have been brought to the surface. When Romey isn’t digging through our human past, she can be found in many of the “Stans” of Central Asia, guiding National Geographic tours, shedding light on the different personalities of the countries that stretch along the former Silk Road. “Kazakhstan is becoming the business hub between Russia and China”; Turkmenistan is miles of white marbled sky scrapers lit up with LEDs; Uzbekistan has the cities of the Silk Road; and Kyrgyzstan is like the “little Switzerland” of Central Asia.