![]() The Silk Road also served as a vector for the diffusion of ideas and religions (initially Buddhism and then Islam), enabling civilizations from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia to interact. Since the transport capacity was limited, over long distances, and often unsafe, luxury goods were the only commodities that could be traded. In addition to silk, major commodities traded included gold, jade, tea, and spices. Caravans did not travel for the whole distance since the trading system functioned as a chain with merchants shipping goods back and forth from one trade center to the other. It started at Changan (Xian) and ended at Antioch or Constantinople (Istanbul), passing by commercial cities such as Samarkand and Kashgar. Economies of scale, harsh conditions, and security considerations required the organization of trade into caravans, slowly trekking from one stage (town or oasis) to the other.Īlthough it is suspected that significant trade occurred for about 1,000 years beforehand, the Silk Road opened around 139 BCE once China was unified under the Han dynasty. The presence of steppes favored travel, although several arid zones had to be bypassed, such as the Gobi and Takla Makan deserts. The Silk Road consisted of a succession of trails followed by caravans through Central Asia, about 6,400 km in length. Its name is taken from the prized Chinese textile that flowed from Asia to the Middle East and Europe, although many other commodities were traded along the route. Please contact or call 33 for more information.The Silk Road was the most enduring trade route in human history, used for about 1,500 years. Guided tours and evening/weekend hours are available by appointment. Visitors are welcome any time during the departments open hours, Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. Paper Roads will be on exhibit in the Special Collections & Archives reading room (ZSR 625) through May 31. All are welcome to attend this discussion of how we create visual representations of places that may exist only in imagination. On March 26 at 4:00 p.m., Gianni Cestari will visit Special Collections & Archives for a special event, Imagined Geographies: Mapping the Silk Road. Map of the world from the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493) with illustrations of “monstrous creatures” from beyond the known world And at the Charlotte and Philip Hanes Gallery, the exhibit City of Broken Shadowsfeatures works by contemporary artist Gianni Cestari interpreting Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities. At the Museum of Anthropology, the exhibit Stoneware on the Silk Roads: Ceramics from the Changsha Kilns will open on March 12. It is presented in conjunction with two related exhibits from our campus partners. The Special Collections & Archives exhibit is part of the 2018-2019 Wake Forest Silk Road Series. Illustrated palm leaf manuscript (Thai, 19th century) records the legend of Buddhist monk Phra Malai And the discovery of preserved documents by archaeologists in the 20 th century has given us a window into the past lives of travelers and inhabitants along the Silk Road. The movement of information on paper during and after the Silk Road period facilitated the sharing of art, science, technology, and religious beliefs across a wide expanse of geographic space. Map of Asia (1544) by German cartographer Sebastian Munster As this exhibit shows, the profusion of printed texts, maps, and images that began in the mid-15 th century preserved the Silk Road in the imaginations of people who had never experienced it. In Europe the age of print began just as travel on the overland Silk Road was waning. When a system for printing with moveable type was invented and spread quickly throughout Europe in the mid-1400s, paper became the medium of choice for disseminating texts and images. By the 12 th century paper had arrived in Europe. It spread throughout Asia and eventually reached the Middle East, where it was eagerly adopted in the Islamic world. Papermaking technology was invented in China sometime before the first century C.E. This exhibit of books, maps, and prints from Wake Forest collections traces these interactions from the early modern period through the 19th century. The spring exhibit in ZSR Library Special Collections & Archives, Paper Roads: Cultural Exchange in the Age of Print, shows how works on paper became a medium of cultural exchange, through maps, drawings, travelers’ tales, and translations. But the most important trade good on the Silk Road was arguably a more mundane one: paper. – today conjures up images of camel caravans carrying exotic luxury goods like silks, spices, porcelain, and perfumes. ![]() The Silk Road – the term coined in the 19 th century for the network of Central Asian trade routes that flourished between roughly 200 B.C.E. ![]()
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