embroidered silk dated atc. 1100BCEhas been discovered not in China
proper but in a tomb from Xinjiang.
The discovery of silk in isolated second-millenniumBCEfinds from outside
China, however, can hardly be considered as an indication of consistent trade
patterns. Neither the Jade Road nor the Proto-Silk Road were the Silk Road,
especially if silk did not achieve its great prominence on the international
scene until the second andfirst centuriesBCEas is now proposed. And, inci-
dentally, the Romans did not coin the term“Silk Road,”contrary to some
textbooks; that was the brainchild of a German explorer, Baron Ferdinand
von Richthofen, in 1877. The Silk Road begins with sericulture, the pro-
duction of silk by raising silkworms. Indications are that the Chinese were
practicing sericulture as early as thefifth millenniumBCEwith the oldest
piece of surviving cloth dated at 3630BCE. The Chinese would keep the
secrets of silk making as well as the domestic silkworms to themselves until
the sixth centuryCE.
Silk is made by unwinding thefilament from the cocoon of the silkworm
caterpillar (Bombyx mori), which comes as one very long unbroken thread,
usually between 500 and 1,200 yards, but sometimes up to 2,000 yards.
Betweenfive and tenfilaments are then twisted together to form a single
thread of silk that is woven into cloth. The unusual length of thefilament
accounts for the exceptional strength of silk. It is also smooth, supple, lus-
trous, and shiny. It holds dye better, is softer and more comfortable to wear,
and is more beautiful than any other naturalfiber. Under the Qin and Han,
government workshops produced silk as did thousands of private producers
from whom the government collected taxes in silk. It also paid its officials
and sometimes its soldiers in bolts of silk.
Silk clothing, albeit at a low level of quality, was common in China, hemp
being the only other principal material used for clothing. Silk exchanged for
jade with the Yuezhi was sometimes passed westward again over the Proto-
Silk Road or along the Scythian steppe route described in Herodotus. How
far west Chinese silk came is evidenced by threads found in a Hallstatt
princely grave dated from the sixth to fifth centuries BCE in southern
Germany. Later, when the Xiongnu were extorting silk from the Chinese
government, it reached the Mediterranean in ever larger quantities.
It is at this point that Zhang Qian and the emperor Wudi entered the
scene. Zhang Qian’s protracted, high-profile adventures across Central Asia
followed by Wudi’s armies gave notice that the Chinese had arrived and
were open for business. As Sima Qian notes:“After the Han had sent its
envoy to open up communications with the state of Daxia all the barbarians
of the distant West craned their necks to the East and longed to catch a
glimpse of China.”The domination of routes through Central Asia passed
from nomadic pastoralists to the settled empires: the Chinese in the east, the
Kushans in the south, and the Persians inthe west. To the peoples of Central Asia,
the door to a treasure house of opportunity went from being ajar to sprung
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