07/25/2026
The Silk Road: The Highway of Civilisations
For more than 1,500 years, the Silk Road connected East and West, creating one of history's greatest networks of trade and cultural exchange. Stretching from China through Samarkand, Bukhara, Persia, Baghdad, and Constantinople to Europe, its routes carried far more than goods—they spread ideas, religions, technologies, languages, and artistic traditions across continents.
As this map illustrates, Chinese silk traveled west, while horses from Central Asia, spices and incense from India and Arabia, glassware from Persia and Europe, and textiles flowed in the opposite direction. Active from roughly the 2nd century BCE to the 14th century CE, the Silk Road transformed cities into thriving centers of commerce and made Eurasia more interconnected than ever before.
References: Valerie Hansen, The Silk Road: A New History (2012); Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads (2015); UNESCO Silk Roads Programme; Encyclopaedia Britannica.
