Invented in China about 5,500 years ago, silk was the most slippery and mysterious material of the ancient world. Fashioned from the twisted threads of mulberry silkworm cocoons, the fabric’s production process has been protected by the state for thousands of years.
That said, the secrecy of silk-making does not mean that the material remained confined to China throughout antiquity. In fact, traces of the finished cloth made their way west long before sericulture strategies were smuggled out of China, inspiring an impressive trade network known as the Silk Road.
Although this ancient network would eventually criss-cross the entire Eurasian continent, its foundations date back to 130 BC, when the Chinese imperial court first welcomed trade with the West. Once opened, this network would nurture all manner of commercial and cultural interactions, acting as a means for individuals from distant worlds to mix and mingle.
This is what you need to know about the beginning of the Silk Road, more than two millennia ago.
What Was The Silk Road?
An ever-changing set of trade routes, the Silk Road was a network of trade that carried silks, spices, and other commodities from east to west and vice versa for much of antiquity, from about 130 BC to around 1450 AD.
Covering as much as 6,000 miles at its peak, this hodgepodge of routes crossed Eurasia, across mountains, deserts, steppes and seas. Among these routes, the most famous went from China to Central and Western Asia, to the shores of the Mediterranean, where some ships set sail for Rome.
Learn more: A Clandestine Army: The 8,000 Terracotta Warriors
What was traded on the Silk Road?
The network takes its name from the silk trade, although textiles do not travel the Silk Road alone.
Material Merchandise
Other important items that crossed these roads included salt, spices, teas and medicines. And while many of the more successful merchants hawked gems, precious metals, paper, and china, others sold fruit, flowers, animals, glassware, and gunpowder.
Cultural products
Along with these goods, Silk Road merchants also transported cultural goods. With their religion, science, art, architecture, and technology, these traders spread ideas, cultures, and customs, which were repeatedly remade and reshaped as they traveled.
This process of intellectual syncretism accelerated as more individuals hit the road, including soldiers, migrants and missionaries, as well as merchants. And as they passed from trading post to trading post, so did the disease, with flashes of bubonic plague and parasitic infection periodically tormenting the populations of the Silk Road.
Learn more: The Terracotta Army: What These Life-Size Clay Warriors Tell Us About Ancient China
Name a network
People, products, philosophies and pathogens have all traveled the Silk Road, but scholars almost always cite silk as the epitome of exchange between East and West, so much so that textiles now embodies the entire network.
And that’s because the fabric fueled the formation of the network over 2,000 years ago.
Who started the Silk Road?
Since its invention, silk was considered something special. Super adaptable, the textile has served its wearers well in both winter and summer. Super absorbent, it easily soaks up the dye. Admired for its durability (single strands being several times stronger than steel), silk was also valued for its brilliance.
Thanks to these characteristics, the material became massively popular with Chinese figures, who coveted the woven yarns as fabric as well as cash. But, as silk began to permeate Chinese society, word of the wonders of the fabric began to spread beyond China’s borders, slowly but surely.
Learn more: Silkmaking is an ancient practice that presents an ethical dilemma
sell silk
Early traders who sold silk only transported the textile out of China occasionally, with the earliest traces of the trade appearing in ancient Egyptian tombs around 1070 BC
But, even though these early forays into selling silk abroad spurred demand for the fabric, it took nearly 1,000 more years (and border issues) for Chinese sellers to truly respond to the foreign desire for silk.
border battles
At that time, the Chinese state maintained a precarious balance with the tribes that lived along its borders, but its greatest adversaries among these tribes were the nomads. Xiongnu. Overwhelmed by their frequent invasions of the Chinese borders, the Chinese court launched a massive military campaign against the Xiongnu in 133 BC.
In an effort to improve China’s prospects in this fight, the court sent a young officer named Zhang Qian to Central Asia to forge alliances. And although Zhang returned without any success in his search for allies, he had gathered all kinds of important information about the culture and trade of the West.
Learn more: Did the Great Wall of China really keep invaders out?
cash crops
Zhang spotted an appetite for Chinese silk wherever he went, but he also stumbled across people who were making tempting goods themselves. And in the Fergana Valley of present-day Uzbekistan, he found a product especially worth seeking out: a strange variety of “heavenly horse,” which would prove valuable in campaigns against the Xiongnu.
With the possibilities of westward trade thus revealed, the Chinese court sent mission after mission to promote trade to Fergana, as well as to India, Parthia, and Rome. Following pre-existing paths, including the Royal Persian Road and the Steppe Roads, and forging their own, these missions marked the official start of the Silk Road.
Traders on the Silk Road
Soon, Silk Road traders were transporting their wares on an astonishing scale, though they rarely traveled the entire route themselves. Instead, a chain of successive intermediaries from all corners of Central and Western Asia transported goods on small segments of the network in caravans.
Braving the darkest terrain and toughest bandits, these merchants trudged along the Silk Road until 1453 AD, when taxes, tolls and Ottoman boycotts blocked much of it. trade between East and West. But by then, the tangled web had already made its mark, expanding ancient minds and clothing ancient bodies in shimmering, shimmering silk.
Learn more: The Silk Road was more than a vast trade route