Silk Road

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a network of overland and maritime trade routes connecting China, Central Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, East Africa, and Europe from antiquity through the fifteenth century, along which silk, spices, precious metals, glassware, and other luxury goods were exchanged alongside ideas, religions, technologies, and diseases; the term Silk Road was coined by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen in 1877, though the routes themselves had operated for millennia; the Silk Road facilitated the spread of Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity, the diffusion of papermaking, printing, and gunpowder from China to Europe, and the cross-pollination of art and architecture across Eurasia; the oasis cities of Samarkand, Dunhuang, and Palmyra owed their prosperity to their positions along these routes