Main routes of the Silk Road
In addition to silk, a wide range of other goods was traded along the Silk Road, and the network was besides important for migrants and travellers, and for the diffuse of religion, philosophy, skill, engineering, and artistic ideals. The Silk Road had a significant impact on the lands through which the routes passed, and the trade played a significant role in the development of towns and cities along the Silk Road routes .
many merchants along the Silk Road were involved in relay trade wind, where an detail would change owners many times and travel a little bit with each one of them before reaching its final buyer. It seems to have been highly strange for any individual merchant to travel all the room between China and Europe or Northern Africa. rather, assorted merchants specialized in transporting goods through versatile sections of the Silk Road.
Examples of goods traded along the Silk Road :
- Silk textiles
- Sandalwood from India
- Saffron, pistachio nuts and dates from Persia
- Myrrh and frankincense from Somalia
- Glass bottles from Egypt
Overland routes
The Silk Road consisted of several routes. Among the overland routes, the ascendant ones where the Northern route, the Southern path and the Southwestern route .
The Northern Route
The easternmost indicate of the northern route was Chang ’ an, an important city in central China. Chang ’ an was the capital for more than ten unlike chinese dynasties .
The northern route became popular around the foremost century BC, when the Chiense Emperor Wu of Han, who reigned from 141 to 87 BC, used his united states army to keep mobile tribes from attacking travellers within his celestial sphere of influence .
From Chang ’ an, the northerly route went northwest through the taiwanese provinces Shaanxi and Gansu, before splitting into three unlike routes .
- #1 followed the mountain ranges north of the Taklamakan Desert
- #2 followed the mountain ranges south of the Taklamakan Desert.
- #3 went north of the Tian Shan mountains through Turpan, Talgar and Almaty in what is now southeastern Kazakhstan.
# 1 and # 2 rejoined each other again at Kashgar, an oasis city in today ’ second Xinjiang. After Kashgar, the routes split again, with a southerly ramify going down towards Termez and Balkh, and a northerly branch going to Kokand and then west across the Karakum Desert .
Before reaching Merv in Turkmenistan, both routes joined the chief southerly path .
One branch of the northerly route turned off to the northwest rather of continuing westwards. This one past the Aral Sea and went north of the Caspian Sea, before reaching the Black Sea .
The Southern Route
The southern path went from China through the Karakoram mountains. Because of this, it was besides known as the Karakoram road. The Karakoram batch range spans the borders of Pakistan, India, and China, and besides extends into Afghanistan and Tajikistan in the northwesterly.
Read more: How Maritime Law Works
West of the Karakoram mountains, the southern route had many spurs heading south to the sea, since many travellers wished to continue by ship rather of going overland .
For those who did not head south to the ocean, the southerly route continued over the Hindu Kush mountains and into Afghanistan, joining the northern routes before reaching Merv in Turkmenistan .
From Merv, the southern route went westward in about a straight production line, through northerly Iran, Mesopotamia and the northern outskirts of the syrian Desert, to reach the Levant where ships were waiting to take the cherished cargo across the Mediterranean to southerly Europe. Continued travel over farming was besides possible from the Levant, either north through Anatolia or south to North Africa .
There was besides a branch of the Silk Road that went from Herat in Afghanistan to the ancient port township of Charax Spasinu by the Persian Gulf, passing through Susa on the way. From Charax Spasinu, the travel continued by ship to versatile Mediterranean ports, such as Petra .
The Southwestern Route
The southwestern route went from China to India, through the Ganges Delta. This delta region was an significant trade hub, and archaeological excavations have found an amaze align of goods from diverse parts of the universe here, such as ancient Roman beads and gemstones from Thailand and Java .
trade hub
The regions function as a trade hub besides meant that the area served as a currentness change. Most western currencies never made it further east than this and most eastern and chinese coins never made it further west than this. The traders in the Ganges Delta chiefly used easterly currencies when they traded with eastern merchants and westerly currencies when they traded with western merchants. Traders would exchange currentness with each-other to have the appropriate currency when trading with merchants from different areas. This was not strictly speaking necessity since the coins were made out of cute metals and their worth was determined by their aureate or eloquent value. many traders would none the less prefer to trade using currencies that was widely circulated in their character of the universe. IE western traders preferred the silver dram of the Sasanian empire ( Neo-Persian ) or the gold solidus of the Byzantine empire ( Eastern Rome ) and eastern traders preferred chinese currency .
currentness brokers
The traders in the Ganges delta did in other words fill a function alike to what currency exchange brokers do today. currency brokers help facilitate the trade between different countries and cultures by allowing people to buy and sell currencies. Today these brokers besides facilitate currency guess and fx trade, The buy and sell of currencies to make a net income from changes in the substitution rate. This was not possible at the time of the silk road since, as earlier mention, the value of the currencies was fixed to the value of the metals they were made of. many contemporary currencies in the area remains fixed to this day .
The Ledo route
There is tell for a trading route going from Sichuan in contemporary China through Yunnan, Burma, and Bangladesh. In some sources, the route is called Ledo.
even though the ancient Greco-Roman geographer Claudius Ptolemy ( circa 100-170 AD ) never travelled this far east, he must have been able to obtain information about the region through other travellers, because he produced a map where the Ganges Delta is depicted with a remarkable academic degree of acuracy. The map shows that whoever informed Ptolemy knew about things such as the course of the Brahmaputra River .
Maritime routes
The maritime parts of the Silk Road involved waters such as :
- The Yellow Sea
- The East China Sea
- The South China Sea
- The Strait of Malacca
- The Indian Ocean
- The Gulf of Bengal
- The Arabian Sea
- The Persian Gulf
- The Red Sea
- The Mediterranean
name
The Silk Road is named after the lucrative international trade in Chinese silk textiles that started during the Han dynasty ( 207 BC – 220 CE ). Using one single name for this intricate web of trade routes is a mod invention ; the name Silk Road was coined by the geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen in the late nineteenth hundred. Being a german native, he used the names Seidenstraße and Seidenstraßen which translates to Silk Road and Silk Roads, respectively. Unsurprisingly, use of the condition Silk Road is not uncontroversial .
