The Silk Roads
The overland and sea routes that carried silk, horses, paper and glass between China, India, Persia and the Mediterranean. They carried more than goods: religions, technologies and diseases travelled the same way.
What a learner can do afterwards
- Trace one route on a map and name two goods that moved in each direction along it
- Give an example of something other than goods that travelled the roads, such as a faith, a technique or an illness
- Explain why few traders travelled the whole distance, and what that meant for prices at each end
1 · Read
You wear things made far away. That happened in Rome too. Rich Romans paid traders from the east for Chinese silk, and silk grew so loved that in 14 CE the Senate said men must not wear it. No Roman buyer ever met a Chinese seller.
Trade grew because two strong empires stood at the two ends. Han China pushed routes west after Emperor Wu sent Zhang Qian to find horses, and by 101 BCE China held the Ferghana valley. Rome ruled the whole Mediterranean shore. With both lands at peace, goods could move.
Picture a camel train. Each camel can carry 500 pounds across deserts that break carts and wheels. At sea, sailors rode summer winds east and winter winds home. Few traders walked the whole road. Goods passed from hand to hand, and each seller added cost, so prices rose at every stop.
Watch for what else rode the roads. Sogdian traders carried Buddhism from India to China and turned Sanskrit books into Chinese. Paper making moved west the same way. Illness rode too: a plague that likely started in China killed about one in ten Romans.
Silk and more crossed Asia hand to hand, with prices rising at each stop and ideas riding along.
2 · Watch
Take it off screen
Where it sits
8 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.