The glass industry was therefore a relatively minor craft during the Republican period; although, during the early decades of the 1st century AD the quantity and diversity of glass vessels available increased dramatically.[1] This was a direct result of the massive growth of the Roman influence at the end of the Republican period, the Pax Romana that followed the decades of civil war,[4] and the stabilisation of the state that occurred under Augustus' rule.[1] Still, Roman glasswares were already making their way from Western Asia (i.e. the Parthian Empire) to the Kushan Empire in Afghanistan and India and as far Han Empire of China. The first Roman glass found in China came from an early 1st-century BC tomb at Guangzhou, ostensibly via the South China Sea.[5][6]