The Silk Road opens
Eurasia is linked by goods, ideas and disease
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The "Silk Road" is a modern term for a network of routes, not a single road, and few merchants travelled the whole distance — goods were resold leg by leg. Buddhism reached China this way, paper and gunpowder went west, and Indian numerals came to Europe via the Arabs. The network was also a vector for pandemics: both the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death followed the trade routes. Sea routes across the Indian Ocean probably carried greater volume, but the land routes connected regions that otherwise had no contact.
For children
Camel caravans began carrying silk from China all the way to the Mediterranean. But what travelled furthest were not the goods — they were ideas: religions, inventions, numbers and scripts. Unfortunately diseases travelled the same road.
Connects to
Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org