The Silk Roads as a Network of Peoples

The Silk Roads were not a single road but a shifting network of overland and sea routes linking China, Central Asia, India, Persia, Arabia and the Mediterranean. Han China's interest grew after the envoy Zhang Qian travelled west from 138 BCE and reported on kingdoms that prized silk and bred fine horses. Few traders crossed the whole distance; instead goods passed hand to hand through middlemen such as the Sogdians of Central Asia, who became famous merchants and translators.

Silk, spices, glass, paper and horses moved, but so did religions, languages, artistic styles, technologies and diseases. Oasis cities like Samarkand and Kashgar grew rich and cosmopolitan, mixing peoples and beliefs. The name itself is modern, coined by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen in 1877, which reminds us that historians shape how we picture the past.