We are both maritime trading nations.
The island and its natural harbour were used by Arab merchants as a maritime trading centre from the 10th to the late 15th century.
The distinction between coastal and interior peoples is especially salient in western New Guinea, where maritime trading communities live along the coast, while agrarian, noncommercial societies with strongly developed and highly localized customs inhabit the interior.
But, for good or ill, his writing played a key part in establishing the view that the architectural style of Venice, the great maritime trading nation of the medieval world, was particularly appropriate for buildings in modern Britain.
The new British state, a maritime trading nation since prehistoric times, now fashioned growing naval and industrial power into a world empire that sealed an often arrogant self-regard, global but also insular.
"Sri Lanka is located at the nexus of crucial maritime trading routes in the Indian Ocean connecting Europe and the Middle East to China and the rest of Asia," the report says.
