Somehow it seems longer than two months since our last editorial donated by Asenath Amenhotep. Much has happened in site since then and much more is planned in the next two months. One major thing planned is the upcoming Orient Lunar Festival. Now you might be thinking, what do I have to do with an Asian holiday? Perhaps more than you would think... Read on to find the extraordinary way our guest editor Feiyan Zhou reminds us how we share alot more than we imagine in our histories.

Much of my enjoyment in reading history comes from the discovery of previously unsuspected connections between widely separated civilizations. When the Orient was first launched, I was eager to join in because I had so little knowledge about the Far East and I wanted to learn more. Two years later, I'm not sure how much more I know, but I've found many interesting connections to the periods of history with which I am more familiar.

Did you know that long before the familiar travels of Marco Polo to China, the peoples of ancient Mesopotamia, Rome, Egypt and Greece were trading with the ancient civilizations of India? I joined Bharat Mata because I kept turning up references to ancient India in my reading.

There is archaeological evidence of trade between the prehistoric civilization of Mohenjo-Daro in India and the Dilmun mentioned in the Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh. Many of you will remember that the Greek Alexander the Great reached the mouth of the Indus in 325 BCE. India also traded with China, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and Africa. China traded with the peoples of the Asian steppes, who traded with the early inhabitants of Europe. In the first centuries CE, Cambodia traded with not only China and India, but with the Romans, who also traded with the Celts. Even the Americas were a part of this exchange, as the Norse and Celts visited the western shores long before the European explorers of the Middle Ages, and the indigenous peoples of the Americas are thought to have originally come from Asian lands.

Though this circular traffic between cultures consisted primarily of goods, ideas were also exchanged and developed. It's always interesting to look at those timelines which show just what was going on in different parts of the world during a particular era. Some innovations seem to have sprung from solid rock almost at the same time in widely separated parts of the globe, but a careful examination can show that many developments were due to the trading of knowledge.

Now here we are at AncientWorlds in this new age of computers, people from all parts of the world, still exchanging our ideas and making new connections through our exploration of the connections of the past.

Many thanks Feiyan! This year make an effort to explore shared history! There are certainly many opportunities to do that this month, every world news included in this issue explores something fascinating brought to you by that culture. And on that note, we'll continue with our Global news..

Alert citizens will have noticed that we are now advertising through Google on the main page and the Daily Index. No, your eyes aren't deceiving you! Google is now offering a partnership to direct selected (and hopefully "content appropriate") advertising to a site, in return for which the site is eligible to make money. Before we all cringe at whether AW is "going commercial," here are some thoughts from Amun-Jot when he announced this new program to the scribes:

" In an effort to explore other income potential for AW, I would like to begin testing the placement of Google Ads on the site. Google ads have a reputation of being relatively non-intrusive and well-targeted, based on their analysis of your content. I am a bit skeptical about how much revenue they can actually generate, but it is worth a trial. We can start slowly by placing the ads on few pages and seeing the results. Then, if the ads seem to be in keeping with the site theme and content, and they show some income potential we could continue to place them on other pages. It would be relatively simple to make it so that only members at the free levels and visitors to the site would see the ads. In other words, Patrons would not see ads served by Google (unless we determine that they were so well-targeted that they were actually useful links for all). Ads are more a way to earn income off casual visitors to the site, so we should keep that in mind when trying different placements. "

The costs of running the AW server, right now, is supported solely by patrons, so getting casual or non-patron viewers to help us support AW financially is one of those 2006 resolutions which we will be exploring. In the meantime, stay tuned for further programming, and hopefully patrons will find the ads 'disappear' sometime in the near future. ;)