Silk Road Research Paper

The Silk Road is one of the most famous trade routes that have ever existed. It has done a lot more for countries than just allowing for trade between countries. The Silk Road has allowed for different cultures to travel and enter into new places where new religions, art, and culture can flourish. We will look into how the Silk Road came into existence, the trade that took place on the path, and how cultures were able to spread across new lands. First we must look into how the Silk Road was developed. The Silk Road is one of the oldest trading routes. In an article by Mark Joshua he states that the Silk Road was “established during the Han Dynasty of China, which linked the regions of the ancient world in commerce” (Mark, J). This means …show more content…
From an article posted by the Silk Road encyclopedia that listed items that different countries would export in order to pay for the products they needed to import. From this article I was able to find out that the main export of China was dyes, metals, and jewels. It went on to tell how India was well known for its fabrics. The article then went on to state how eastern Europe’s biggest exports were furs and skins along with their slave trade. From this information we can see that the Silk Road trade was necessary in order for all the different countries to have the items that they wanted. The Romans need the trade route in order to get their precious silk while China could have needed it for the fabrics from India. Now that we have seen the items that would be traded on the Silk Road it is time to go deeper into why the route was more benefits beyond trade. (Items and Products of …show more content…
This is important because by having travelers taking these roads to find new locations to spread everything from new languages to new religions. This can really be seen in the Article by Mark Joshua where he states “The greatest value of the Silk Road was the exchange of culture. Art, religion, philosophy, technology, language, science, architecture, and every other element of civilization was exchanged through the Silk Road”. From this we can see that the Silk Road allowed for a lot more than just trade. New religions would begin to spread which is a major event because from history we can see that a lot of conflicts and wars have occurred over disputes about religions. In an article by Yale they state that the transfer of culture was so important they state this by saying “Chinese learned from other societies, specifically India, the home of Buddhism.” (Hanson). This proves how important the Silk Road was because it allowed this new religion to completely take over the Chinese