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The
Silk Road
:
8 Goods Traded Along the Ancient Network
The vibrant network
opened up exchanges between far-flung cultures throughout central
Eurasia
. DAVE ROOS
The Silk
Road wasn't a single route, but rather a vibrant trade
network that crisscrossed central
Eurasia
for centuries, bringing far-flung cultures into contact. Traveling by
camel and horseback, merchants, nomads, missionaries, warriors, and
diplomats not only exchanged exotic goods, but transferred knowledge,
technology, medicine and religious beliefs that reshaped ancient
civilizations.
The term "silk road" was coined in 1877 by Ferdinand Freiherr von
Richthofen, a German geographer, who focused on the flourishing silk
trade between the Chinese Han Empire (206 B.C. to 220 A.C.) and Rome.
But modern scholars recognize that the
Silk Road
(or Silk Roads) continued to enable cross-continental trade until
large-scale maritime trade replaced overland caravans in the 17th and
18th centuries.
Here are eight of the most important trade goods that fueled centuries of
Silk Road
cultural exchange:
1.
Silk
It's called the
Silk Road
for a reason. Silk, first produced in
China
as early as 3,000 B.C., was the ideal overland trade item for merchant
and diplomatic caravans that may have traveled thousands of miles to
reach their destinations, says Xin
Wen, a historian of medieval
China
and Inner Asia at
Princeton
University
.
"Your carrying capacity was very limited,
so you brought whatever was most valuable, but also the lightest,"
says Wen, whose upcoming book is titled The King's Road:
Diplomatic Travelers and the Making of the Silk Road in Eastern Eurasia,
850-1000. "Not only does silk fit these characteristics
exactly—high value, low weight—but it's also extremely
versatile."
The Roman elite prized Chinese silk as a luxuriously thin textile, and
later, when silk-making technology was brought to the Mediterranean,
artisans in
Damascus
created the reversible woven silk textile known as damask.
But silk was more than clothing, says Wen. In Buddhist cultures it was
made into ritual banners or used as a canvas for paintings. In the
important Silk Road settlement of Turfan in Eastern China, silk was used
as currency, writes historian
Valerie Hansen, and in the Tang Dynasty (618 to 907 A.C.), silk was
collected as a form of tax.
2.
Horses
Terra cotta statues of a Qin Dynasty
Horseman, on display in
France
1992.
Horses were first domesticated in the steppes of Central Asia around
3700 B.C. and transported nomadic tribes that hunted and raided across
vast territories that bordered
China
,
India
,
Persia
, and the
Mediterranean
. Once the horse was introduced into agrarian societies, it became a
sought-after tool for transport, cultivation and cavalry, writes
historian James Millward in Silk
Road: A Very Short Introduction.
The silk-for-horse trade was one of the most
important and long-lasting exchanges on the
Silk Road
. Chinese merchants and officials traded bolts of silk for well-bred
horses from the Mongolian steppes and Tibetan plateau. In turn, nomad
elites prized the silk for the status it conferred or the additional
goods it could buy.
Wen says that horses, by providing their own
transportation, were the ultimate high-value, low-weight commodity on
the
Silk Road
, and were "a very unique luxury item for the elite of the Eurasian
world."
3.
Paper
Paper, invented
in China in the second century A.C., first spread
throughout
Asia
with the dissemination of Buddhism.
In 751, paper was introduced to the Islamic world when Arab forces
clashed with the Tang Dynasty at the Battle of Talas. The Caliph Harun
al-Rashid built a paper mill in
Baghdad
that introduced papermaking to
Egypt
, North Africa and
Spain
, where paper finally reached
Europe
in the 12th and 13th centuries, writes Millward.
On the Silk Road, travelers carried paper documents that served as
passports to cross nomadic lands or spend the night at a caravansary, a
Silk Road
oasis. But the most important function of paper along the
Silk Road
was that it was bound into texts and books that transmitted entirely new
systems of thought, especially religion.
"It's not a coincidence that Buddhism spread to
China
around the same time that paper became prevalent in the region," says
Wen. "Same with Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism. One of the central
significances of the
Silk Road
is that it served as a channel for the spread of different ideas and
cultural interactions, and much of that relied on paper."
4.
Spices
Cinnamon
seller, miniature from Tractatus de herbis, 15th-century
France
.
Leemage/Universal
Images Group/Getty Images
Spices
from East and South Asia, like cinnamon from
Sri Lanka
and cassia from
China
, were exotic and coveted trade items, but they didn't typically
travel the overland routes of the
Silk Road
. Instead, spices were mainly transported along an ancient maritime Silk
Road that linked port cities from
Indonesia
westward through
India
and the
Arabian Peninsula
.
Across
the
Silk Road
, spices were valued for their use in cooking, but also for religious
ceremonies and as medicine. And unlike silk, which could be produced
wherever silkworms could be kept alive, many spices were derived from
plants that only grew in very specific environments.
"That
means there's a clearer origin for spice than for some of the other
luxury items, which adds to their value," says Wen.
5.
Jade
Millennia
before there was such a thing as the Silk Road,
China
traded with its western neighbors along the so-called
Jade Road
.
Jade,
the crystalline-green gemstone, was central to Chinese ritual culture.
When jade supplies ran low in the 5th millennium B.C., it was necessary
for
China
to establish trade relations with western neighbors like the ancient
Iranian
Kingdom
of Khotan, whose rivers were rich with hunks of nephrite jade, the best
variety of jade for carving intricate figurines and jewelry. The jade
trade to
China
flourished throughout the
Silk Road
period, as did trade in other semi-precious gems like pearls.
6.
Glassware
Westerners
often assume that most Silk Road goods traveled from the exotic Far East
westward to the Mediterranean and Europe, but
Silk Road
trade went in all directions. For example, archeologists excavating
burial mounds in
China
,
Korea
,
Thailand
, and the
Philippines
have found Roman glassware among the prized possessions of the Asian
elite. The distinct type of soda-lime glass made in
Rome
and fashioned into vases and goblets would have eagerly been traded for
silk, which Romans were obsessed with.
7.
Furs
The
taiga is the vast stretch of evergreen forest that runs through Siberia
in Eurasia and continues into
Canada
in
North America
. In the days of the
Silk Road
, writes Millward, the taiga attracted hardy bands of trappers who
harvested fox, sable, mink, beaver, and ermine pelts. This northern
"fur road" supplied luxurious coats and hats to Chinese dynasties
and other Eurasian elites. Millward writes that Genghis
Khan cemented one of his earliest political alliances
with a gift of a sable coat. By the 17th century, in the waning days of
the
Silk Road
, rulers from the Chinese Qing
Dynasty could buy furs from both Siberian and Canadian
trappers.
8.
Slaves
Enslaved
people were a tragically common "trade good" along the
Silk Road
. Raiding armies would take captives and sell them to private traders
who would find buyers in far-flung ports and capitals from
Dublin
in the West to
Shandong
in Eastern China, writes
Silk Road
historian Susan Whitfield. The slaves became servants, entertainers, and
eunuchs for royal courts.
Wen
says that while enslavement was pervasive in premodern Eurasia along the
Silk Road, none of these kingdoms or societies could be classified as
"slave-based" in the same way that the African slave
trade operated in the New World.
"Slaves
were more like an ornament of the life of the
Silk Road
elite," says Wen, "Not a major economic source."
BY
DAVE
ROOS
Dave
Roos is a freelance writer based in the
United States
and
Mexico
. A longtime contributor to HowStuffWorks, Dave has also been published
in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and Newsweek.
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