The Silk Route
Beginnings
The main object of travelling the early caravan routes was to sell goods from faraway places. But what the 19th-century German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen named the Seidenstrasse – Silk Route (or Silk Road) – existed much earlier than the trade in silk.
Salt, lapis lazuli and silk
The earliest commerce on the route concentrated on rock salt, used mainly to preserve meat, which was mined in Afghanistan 5,500 years ago.
At about the same time, the first ores containing lapis lazuli came to light in the mines of Afghanistan’s Badakshan province, the only source of the brilliant blue semi-precious stone for more than five millennia. Lapis was found some 1,350 miles away in the excavations of Ur, the capital city of the Sumerians (and birthplace of the prophet Abraham) in the Tigris/Euphrates river delta near Baghdad, which was founded in about 2100 BC.
The earliest example of silk-making – sericulture – dates from 2750 BC, well before any established trade in this commodity. Silk did become important very early on: some remnants of Chinese silk made as early as 1000 BC have been found in Egypt. However, the rest of the world beyond China’s borders would have to wait until the 5th or 4th century BC before silk was exported to them.
Alexander the Great
The western end of the Silk Route appears to have developed earlier than the eastern end. The Persian empire controlled a large swathe of the Middle East, extending as far as the Indian kingdoms to the east. Trade between the different parts of the empire was already starting to influence the cultures of these regions when Alexander the Great conquered this area as far as Ferghana on the border of the modern-day Xinjiang region of China. Here, in 329 BC, he founded the city of Alexandria Eschate – ‘The Furthest’.
For the next three centuries, the Greeks remained in central Asia, always expanding eastward. In fact, the Greek historian Strabo, writing in the 1st century BC, stated that ‘they extended their empire even as far as the Seres [China].’ Some historians think that Euthydemus (r. 230-200 BC) of Bactria, which had been Persia’s eastern-most province, may have led expeditions as far as Kashgar in Chinese Turkestan, resulting in the first official contacts between China and the West.
Even at this stage, small quantities of Chinese goods, including silk, were reaching the West. These are likely to have arrived with individual traders, who may have started to make the journey in search of new markets despite the danger and precarious political situation at the time.
