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Entry 64 of 240Economic

The Silk Road Opens

c. 130 BCE/Central Asia/Han China / Eurasia
Today Across Central Asia, linking China to the MediterraneanSpan Silk Road · c. 130 BCE – 1450s CE

When a Han emperor sent an envoy west to find allies against steppe raiders, the envoy returned with something more valuable: knowledge of a whole chain of civilizations to trade with. The route that opened — the Silk Road — carried Chinese silk to Rome and Roman glass to China, but far more importantly it carried religions, technologies, and eventually diseases across the whole of Eurasia. For the first time, a shock at one end of the world could ripple to the other — the first draft of a connected globe.

◆ Worth knowingRomans paid so much gold for Chinese silk that a senator griped it was draining the treasury — yet the two superpowers never met, each knowing the other only as a rumor at the far end of the road.
◆ The mechanismTrade-route shift

The path or medium of exchange moves, and a place or power rises or declines because it sits on or off the new route.

Also: Ideological movement · Pandemic

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