The Silk Road
Central Asia lies at the crossroads of history, an area steeped in antiquity protected by great deserts and awesome mountain ranges and the Silk Road a vital trade route for more than 2000 years.
The Silk Road is an extensive interconnected network of trade routes across the Asian continent connecting East, South, and Western Asia with the Mediterranean world, including North Africa and Europe.
Extending over 4,000 miles, the routes enabled people to transport trade goods, especially luxuries such as slaves, silk, satins and other fine fabrics, musk, other perfumes, spices and medicines, jewels, glassware and even rhubarb, while simultaneously serving as a conduit for the spread of knowledge, ideas, cultures, and diseases between different parts of the world.
Although the term the Silk Road implies a continuous journey, very few who traveled the route traversed it from end to end.
As it extends westwards from the ancient commercial centers of China, the continental Silk Road divides into the northern and southern routes bypassing the Taklamakan Desert and Lop Nur (see www.pbase.com/lcurran/china/the_west).
The northern route, which is the narrowly-defined and original Silk Road, starts at Chang'an
(now called Xi'an), the capital of the ancient Chinese Empire.
The route travels northwest through the Chinese province of Gansu from Shaanxi Province, and splits into three further routes, two of them following the mountain ranges to the north and south of the Taklamakan Desert to rejoin at Kashgar; and the other going north of the Tian Shan mountains through Turfan, Talgar and Almaty (in what is now southeast Kazakhstan).
The routes split west of Kashgar with one branch heading down the Alai Valley towards Termez and Balkh (Azerbaijan), while the other traveled through Kokand in the Fergana Valley, and then west across the Karakum Desert towards Merv (Turkmenistan), joining the southern route briefly.
One of the branch routes turned northwest to the north of the Aral and Caspian seas then and on to the Black Sea.
Yet another route started at Xi'an, passed through the Western corridor beyond the Yellow River, Xinjiang, Fergana (in present-day eastern Uzbekistan), Persia (Iran), and Iraq before joining the western boundary of the Roman Empire. A route for caravans, the northern Silk Road brought to China many goods such as dates, saffron powder and pistachio nuts from Persia; frankincense, aloes and myrrh from Somalia; sandalwood from India; glass bottles from Egypt, and other expensive and desirable goods from other parts of the world. In exchange, the caravans sent back bolts of silk brocade, lacquer ware and porcelain.
