Silk Road

Appears in
Oxford Companion to Food

By Alan Davidson

Published 2014

  • About

Silk Road the name given to a network or web of important trading and caravan routes which weave across the mountains and deserts linking China and the Far East, C. Asia, India, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean. These routes may have existed for as long as four thousand years. They were used not only by traders, but also by pilgrims, adventurers, invading armies, nomads, and wandering players. So, not only commodities were being exchanged but also ideas, literature, religion, and technologies.