Indian Ocean trade
Indian Ocean trade is vital for the global economy and has been described as the "cradle" for global trade. Traditionally connecting the western world to the eastern world since antiquity, long-distance maritime trade by South East Asian and South Asian, and Middle Eastern and later African ships has made it a dynamic zone of interaction between peoples, cultures, and civilizations stretching from Southeast Asia to East and Southeast Africa, and the East Mediterranean in the West, in prehistoric and early historic periods.