Silk Road Or Silk Route

Land routes are red, water routes are blue.

What was the Silk Route?
The Silk Route is a convenient name for the
Trans Asia trade routes. At one point it was
viewed as a road along which silk from
China was brought to Turkey and sold to
Europeans. That is an overly simplistic and
not terribly realistic view. It was not a single
road but a number of interconnecting
Caravan Routes over which trade was
conducted.
The Silk Route dates back at least 5500 years
where as silk only dates back about three
thousand years. The early trade on the route
was for rock salt. Salt is necessary for life and
has a number of uses. Salt can help to
preserve meat and shepherds would salt their
herds (no. of animals feeding or travelling
together) to get them to take on water so that
they might survive mountain forage or desert
crossings without water for longer than they
could otherwise.
The Silk Road (or Silk Routes) is an extensive
interconnected network of trade routes
across the Asian continent connecting East,
South, and Western Asia with the
Mediterranean .

The Silk Road extending from Southern

Europe through The Arabian Peninsula,
Somalia, Egypt world, as well as North and
Northeast Africa and Europe.
 Etymology

The first person who used the term

"Seidenstraße" (literally "Silk Road") was
the German geographer
Ferdinand von Richthofen in 1877. The Silk
Road gets its name from the lucrative
Chinese silk trade, a major reason for the
connection of trade routes into an extensive
trans-continental network
The Silk Routes (collectively known as the 'Silk Road')
were important paths for cultural commercial and
technological exchange between traders, merchants,
pilgrims, missionaries, soldiers, nomads and urban
dwellers from Ancient China, Ancient India, Ancient
Tibet, Persia and Mediterranean countries for almost
3,000 years. It gets its name from the lucrative Chinese
silk trade, which began during the Han Dynasty (206
BC–220 BC).
Extending 4,000 miles, the routes enabled people
to transport goods, especially luxuries such as
slaves, silk, satin and other fine fabrics, musk, other
perfumes, spices, medicines, jewels, glassware and
even rhubarb(plant of which the fleshy stalks are
cooked and used as fruit), as well as serving as a
conduit(channel) for the spread of knowledge,
ideas, cultures and diseases between different parts
of the world (Ancient China, Ancient India[Indus
valley, now Pakistan], Asia Minor and the
Mediterranean).
Trade on the Silk Road was a significant factor in the
development of the great civilizations of China, India,
Egypt, Persia, Arabia and Rome, and in several
respects helped lay the foundations for the modern
world.

Although the term the Silk Road implies a

continuous journey, very few who traveled the
route traversed it from end to end. For the most
part, goods were transported by a series of agents
on varying routes and were traded in the bustling
mercantile markets of the oasis towns.
The central Asian sections of the trade
routes were expanded around 114 BCE by the
Han dynasty largely through the missions
and explorations of Zhang Qian, but earlier
trade routes across the continents already
existed.
In the late Middle Ages, transcontinental trade
over the land routes of the Silk Road declined as
sea trade increased though silk was certainly the
major trade item from China, many other
products were traded, and various technologies,
religions and philosophies as well as the
bubonic plague (the so-called 'Black Death')
also travelled along the Silk Routes
India played a vital role in the
trade, being virtually by the
centre of the route as well as
having unique products such as
spices, precious stones, and
hand-crafted goods.