Silk Road

The caravan web that carried silk, spices and ideas between China and the Mediterranean for some 1,500 years.

Overview

Not one road but a shifting web of paths stretching roughly 6,400 kilometers from Chang'an, modern Xian, through the oasis towns of the Taklamakan and the market cities of Samarkand and Bukhara to the Levant. Silk, paper, spices, glass, horses and religions moved along it, and so did the Black Death. Sogdian merchants dominated the middle sections for centuries, and unified Mongol rule in the 13th and 14th centuries brought the closest thing to a single passport. The name was coined by the geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen in 1877. The route declined as sea transport grew cheaper and as war and plague broke the chain of safe oases.