Afghanistan has always been a mountainous crossroads. Through it have come merchants with indigo and Chinese silk, Alexander the Great, nomads from the Steppes, colonies of Buddhist monks, great Moghul conquerors and the ill-fated armies of the British Raj. In this book, Peter Levi, a classical scholar and a poet, seeks the clues which each migration left, and it is this quest that gives the book its theme. How far East did Alexander really establish himself? Who built the great Upland castle that exists on no map? Could the sculptors of Athens really have influenced the early Buddhist artists?