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An “Indian Ocean World Museum” in Sri Lanka?-by Michael Roberts Source:Thuppahis Dr. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake, presenting a proposal with this fuller title “Concept Note for an Indian Ocean World Museum, Researc and Resource Center”  Sri Lanka is ideally located for an Indian Ocean World Museum in what has been termed the “Asian 21st Century.”  People of diverse cultures, religions, histories, and linguistic communities have mixed and mingled for centuries along the ancient spice and silk trade routes of the Indian Ocean where Lanka is centrally placed. Map from Arundathie abeysinghe’s article referred to below The ‘Indian Ocean World’ encompasses East, Southeast Asia and China, South Asia, the Middle East and east coast of Africa, and is the oldest Ocean-based system of trade, exchange, and production. Monsoon-based, trans-oceanic travel and trade led to the emergence by c. 300 BCE of a sophisticated and durable system of long-distance exchange of commodities, monies, technology, ideas, and people and saw ...