World History Silk Road

Many students unfamiliar with World History come to think of the Silk Roads as one road or literally a road made of silk. But it is not. The Silk Road can be thought of as a network of routes connecting the Eastern Mediterranean to Central Asia and Central Asia to China. These complex interconnecting routes included both land and sea routes. In fact, many goods reached Rome via the Mediterranean Sea. Along these routes, merchants would carry goods for trade. The goods being traded would often travel further than the merchant who was trading them. Goods would often times be relayed from merchant to merchant as they reached closer to their destination. As trade goes, each merchant would often times increase the original prices of the
But in doing so, they had to barter with people of different cultures and backgrounds, forcing them to communicate. If it had not been for the Silk Roads, people from different cultures would have never met, meaning silk wouldn’t have made it to the west, and paper wouldn’t have been seen by anyone other than the Chinese! Secondly, in trading for these goods, merchants of different cultures also adapted newly found ideas, such as the making of paper or the idea of another religion such as Buddhism. The fact of the matter is, according to Liu, Buddhism was adapted by Central Asia and China from India via the Silk Roads! Additionally, merchants taking part in bartering along these routes were often times away from their homes for many months, sometimes even years, forcing them to adapt to the new cultures in which they were bartering with. For example, Wood states, “the travelers who went to foreign lands, either for warfare or for trade, brought with them their own languages, knowledge, technologies, religions, and customs.” As these merchants were to return back to their hometowns, they were also bringing back with them these new found customs which they held onto. This in turn led to the development of the civilizations we know and learn about