The Silk Road: Introduction
When you sit down to a bowl of spaghetti at home or a math problem in school, you
probably aren’t thinking about history. Yet it is a fact that noodles are from China and a
number system from Persia and India first made their way into the European world along
ancient trade routes called the Silk Road.
The Silk Road wasn’t a single road but was actually a series of roads and routes that
together made up a huge trade network that stretched from China to Rome with many
branching offshoots to the north and south. The Silk Road gets its name from the luxurious,
brightly colored cloth that was China’s biggest export. The Chinese kept the secrets of
sericulture hidden and closely guarded for 2000
years, and, until the sixth century A.D., China was
The Heavenly Horses are coming
the West’s sole provider of the luxurious fabric.
Across the pastureless wilds
Traders, pilgrims, fortune hunters, soldiers,
A thousand legs at a stretch
adventurers, emigrants, wandering musicians,
Following the eastern road.
and refugees had been travelling these paths for
-Poem by Han Emperor Wu-ti, circa 140 B.C.
thousands of years, with historians estimating
He wrote as he waited for the arrival of new
horses on the silk road
that the Silk Road began as far back as 4,000
years ago. The date for the traditional “opening”
of the Silk Road is given as 105 or 115 B.C. This is when the Chinese went halfway across
Asia to link up with a similar route running from the Mediterranean to Central Asia, in
search of jade, colored glass, and, most importantly, powerful Central Asian horses while
also sending their treasured silk to the far outer reaches of their known world.
Thought the Silk Road was one of the greatest trading routes in the world, it was
also important as an avenue for the exchange of ideas. Some of the most fundamental ideas
and technologies in the world-writing, the wheel, weaving, agriculture, horse-riding, among
many others-made their way across Asia via this highway. Religion, too, played a key role
on the Silk Road. Buddhism and Islam were perhaps the most important in shaping the
character of the route in their time, but many other religions-Christianity, Judaism,
Taoism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism-passed across Asia along this highway as well.
The Silk Road also provided for exchanges of a different type. Many of the flowers
and vegetables that we take so much for granted in the West originated in China or Central
Asia and traveled west along the Silk Road-including roses, azaleas, oranges, peaches, and
pears. From the same road, China also gained grapes, cucumbers, figs, along with sesame,
chives, and cilantro, as these goods travelled back east.
Yet for all of its importance, the Silk Road was by no means a natural route. The
paths taken by the Silk Road are, in truth, among some of the most inhospitable places on
Earth, passing over scorched and waterless land as it links one oasis to the next. The Silk
Road owes an important part of its success to the
domestication of the camel, in this case, the twohump Bactrian camel, as opposed to the one hump
Arabian camel. These animals could carry heavy loads
Two hump Bactrian Camel
over long distances and required little water while doing so. Camels were the fuel-efficient
mini vans of the ancient world. Traders often undertook the journey in caravans, both for
safety and efficiency. As is true with international trade today, politics could make
travelling on the Silk Road difficult and dangerous. The caravans had to travel through
many kingdoms and city-states that fought each other. When conflict broke out, trade
would be interrupted. During the Han and Roman Empires, much of the eastern and
western parts of the route were secure, though the middle passages were still subject to
nomadic raiders and bandits, in addition to power-hungry local warlords and leaders of
independent city-states in central Asia. Only in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, under
the Mongols, whom Europeans have generally seen as merely destructive wasters, was
most of Asia united under one power, and made safe and secure enough for east-west
travel to become almost routine.
At the peak of its usage, tens of thousands of traders travelled the Silk Road. Yet, in
the course of its history, few people ever completed a round trip on the entire Silk Road.
The highway, nearly 5,000 miles long, passed through many nations, each jealous of its own
territory and of the middleman’s profits to be made in trade. None was more jealous than
Persia. And because the Silk Road is funneled through one easily blocked pass through the
Iranian Plateau, the local rulers throughout the centuries were able to bar Easterners and
Westerners from making direct contact with each other. It was only during the above
mentioned Pax Mongolia when Marco Polo made his famous round trip at the end of the
13th century, and returned to tell his tales of ancient cities in the sand, of nomad kings in
silken robes on gold-encrusted thrones, of Eastern cities far greater and more magnificent
than the finest cities in Europe to an unbelieving Western audience.
Now, it is your turn to experience what travelling on the Silk Road was like. This
simulation will take you from the ancient city of Ch’ang-an, the beginning of the Silk Road
in China, all the way to present day Syria, and then beyond. Your group will be your
caravan, and you’ll have to make decisions about which routes to take. At the end, you
don’t have to stay together, but remember, there’s safety in numbers! Along the way, you’ll
visit and learn about some of the ancient wonders of the world, the geography of Asia, and
learn how the Silk Road was the greatest arena for cultural diffusion of the ancient world!