Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Silk Road
For centuries, the great civilisations of East and West were connected by the Silk Road,
a fragile network of shifting intercontinental trade routes that threaded across Asia's
highest mountains and bleakest deserts. The heartland of this trade was Central Asia,
whose cosmopolitan cities grew fabulously wealthy. Traders, pilgrims, refugees and dip-
lomats all travelled the Silk Road, exchanging ideas, goods and technologies in what has
been called history's original 'information superhighway'.
Silk Routes
There was actually no such thing as a single 'Silk Road' - routes changed
over the years according to local conditions. Parts of the network might
be beset by war, robbers or natural disaster: the northern routes were
plagued by nomadic horsemen and a lack of settlements to provide fresh
supplies and mounts; the south by fearsome deserts and frozen moun-
tain passes.
Though the road map expanded over the centuries, the network had
its main eastern terminus at the Chinese capital Chang'an (modern
Xi'an) and extended through the desert and mountains of Central Asia
into Iran, the Levant and Constantinople. Major branches headed south
over the Karakoram range to India and north via the Zhungarian Gap
and across the steppes to Khorezm and the Russian Volga.
Caravans & Trade
Silk was certainly not the only trade on the Silk Road but it epitomised
the qualities - light, valuable, exotic and greatly desired - required for
such a long-distance trade. China's early need for horses to battle no-
mads on its northern border was actually the main impetus for the early
growth of the Silk Road; the silk was traded to the nomads in exchange
for a steady supply of mounts.
Though the balance of trade was heavily stacked in favour of China
(as it is today!), traffic ran both ways. China received gold, silver, ivory,
lapis, jade, coral, wool, rhino horn, tortoise shell, horses, Mediterranean
coloured glass (an industrial mystery as inscrutable to the Chinese as silk
was in the West), cucumbers, walnuts, pomegranates, golden peaches
from Samarkand, sesame, garlic, grapes and wine, plus - an early Parthian
craze - acrobats and ostriches. Goods arriving at the western end included
silk, porcelain, paper, tea, ginger, rhubarb, lacquerware, bamboo, Arabian
spices and incense, medicinal herbs, gems and perfumes.
And in the middle lay Central Asia, a great clearing house that pro-
vided its native beasts - horses and two-humped Bactrian camels -
to keep the goods flowing in both directions. There was in fact little
'through traffic' on the Silk Road; caravanners were mostly short- and
medium-distance haulers who marketed and took on freight along
a given beat. The earliest exchanges were based on barter between
steppe nomads and settled towns. Only later did a monetary economy
enable long-distance routes to develop.
Silk Road Seattle
(http://depts.
washington.edu/
silkroad) has
articles on Silk
Road history,
architecture and
maps.
Silk Road
Reading
Silk Road: Monks,
Warriors & Mer-
chants,
Luce Boulnois
The Ancient Silk
Road Map,
Jonathan Tucker &
Antonia Tozer
The Silk Road in
World History,
Xinru Liu
