Silk Road

A former trade route linking China to Europe and the Middle East. The trail had a length of about 6,500 km (4,000 miles) and was used from the third century BC to the seventeenth century AD till the discovery of a sea route to China. The importance of the trail declined in the sixth century AD, when it lost some significance due to the influx of Turkish people in Central Asia. The term Seidenstrasse (German “silk road”) was first used by the German traveler and geographer Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen in 1877. The Silk Road initially ran from Xi’an, the ancient capital of China (later extended further East to Luoyang) to Anxi, where it split into three, continuing on through Arabia and as far as Alexandria and Rome. Trade on the Silk Road was a significant factor in the development of the civilizations of China, India, Persia, Europe and Arabia. Silk was a major trade item from China, but many other goods were also traded. The massive exchange of technologies, religions and philosophies, as well as the bubonic plague (the “Black Death”), was due to the huge usage of the Silk Route. It was often called “a gift from the gods”.