The Year 2520

This article challenges contemporary (2020 CE) assumptions regarding the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road that influence how the future of a rising China and its global impact are imagined. By quantifying the present and projecting it into the future, the future archaeology of abandoned infrastructure (ports) and architecture (ships) is evaluated alongside contemporary archival materials and cartographic imagery in a hypothetical scenario where, in 2520 CE, an archaeology team explores the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. Theoretically framed within anthropological archaeology and employing maritime archaeology as a method, the team visits three port sites and identifies the remains of all 122 ships that sank between the East China Sea and the Mediterranean between 2016 and 2020 CE. The nature and extent of trade are revealed, the transnational maritime cultural landscape is reconstructed, and the outcome is a strikingly different understanding of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.