The Silk Road

The Silk Road is the historical network of overland and maritime trade routes that linked China with the Mediterranean world across Central Asia, the Middle East and beyond, flourishing from roughly the second century BCE until the rise of sea trade in the early modern era. Named for the Chinese silk that moved west along it, though it carried goods, technologies, religions and ideas in both directions, the network passed through great trading cities such as Samarkand, Kashgar and Bukhara and is credited with helping transmit Buddhism into China, papermaking into the Islamic world and gunpowder into Europe.