Silk Road

The name Silk Road can suggest one road running directly between China and Europe, but historical exchange depended on numerous connected overland paths and maritime routes. These linked regions of East, Central, South and West Asia with the Mediterranean world and beyond. The routes varied with geography, political conditions, trade needs and available transport. The collective label is modern: UNESCO notes that the German geologist Ferdinand von Richthofen used the term Die Seidenstrasse in the mid-19th century for this network.

Silk was a celebrated and valuable commodity, but it was only one of many goods moving through the network. Sources also record spices, foodstuffs, raw materials, textiles and manufactured objects. Goods travelled by pack animals on land and by ships at sea. Merchants commonly covered portions of a route and exchanged cargoes along the way, rather than one caravan necessarily traversing the entire distance. Trading towns and ports provided places to exchange goods and services.

The routes carried people as well as merchandise. Merchants, diplomats, pilgrims, monks and other travellers helped transmit religious beliefs, artistic styles, technical knowledge and languages between communities. Buddhism, for example, spread across parts of Central and East Asia through movements of people and texts along these corridors. Such exchanges were not one-way: local societies adapted incoming ideas and contributed to new forms of art, learning and practice.

The Silk Roads developed over many centuries, and different sections were used at different times. One formally documented example is UNESCO’s Chang’an–Tianshan Corridor: the listed property covers a 5,000-kilometre section from Chang’an/Luoyang in China to the Zhetysu region of Central Asia. UNESCO says this corridor took shape between the 2nd century BCE and 1st century CE and remained in use until the 16th century. It is one part of the much wider network, not the whole Silk Road.