Asian Geographic – Special Edition 2017-2018

Precious goods travelled along the Silk Road.

Tutankhamun’s funeral mask is made with lapis lazuli

from Badakhshan, obsidian from Turkey or Israel, and

carnelian from India, Germany, and Siberia. Precious

metals were extracted and crafted in metallurgical

centres in Bulgaria, Georgia, Spain, and India.

Arguably the most valuable Silk Road commodity

was horses. With strong horses, you could ride further

and faster, pull ploughs and, most importantly, have a

significant advantage over non-mounted adversaries in

battle. The best horses were raised by nomads on the

Eurasian steppe, and the Chinese would send as many

as 10 diplomatic and trade missions each year to buy the

finest specimens. A Tea and Horse Commission was set

up to handle the trade, and it had a monopoly on both

these goods entering and leaving China.

Wherever merchants travelled, so, too, did

inventions and ideas. Sericulture, porcelain, gunpowder,

and paper made their way west from China. Coffee,

algebra, surgery, and optics were developed in the Arab

world, and in India, mathematicians first developed the

concept of zero. These inventions and discoveries went

global because when travellers saw something they

liked, they took it with them. On long nights around

the camp fire, or whilst haggling in the bazaar, they

engaged in debates and shared discoveries.

IMAGE © SHUTTERSTOCK

What tr avelled along the Road?

Of course, silk travelled along the Silk Road. Remnants

excavated in Egypt, dating from 1070BC, appear to

have come all the way from China. But though this

luxurious, mysterious textile was greatly prized by

the ancient Mediterranean elite who could afford to

purchase it, the volume and total value of the silk trade

was actually rather small.

600
Golden Age of the
Silk Road

711–756

Arab Conquests of

Spain and Central

Asia

c.800

Invention of porcelain

and gunpowder in

China

1095–99

First Crusade, leading

to greater exchange

of ideas between

Europe and the

Middle East

1206

Foundation of the

Mongol Empire,

leading to flourishing

trade under Pax

Mongolica

→

SCIENCE