So the silk road didn't begin trade, but it did radically expand its scope, and the connections that were formed by mostly unknown merchants arguably changed the world more than any political or religious leaders.
It was especially cool if you were rich, because you finally had something to spend your money on other than temples.
But even if you weren't rich, the Silk Road reshaped the lives of everyone living in Africa and Eurasia, as we will see today. Let's go straight to the Thought Bubble.
As previously mentioned, the silk road was not a road.
It's not like archaeologists working in Uzbekistan have uncovered a bunch of yield signs and baby on board stickers. It was an overland route where merchants carried goods for trade.
But it was really two routes: One that connected the Eastern Mediterranean to Central Asia and one that went from Central Asia to China.
Further complicating things, the Silk Road involved sea routes: Many goods reached Rome via the Mediterranean, and goods from Central Asia found their way across the Pacific to Japan and even Java.
So we shouldn't think of the Silk Road as a road but rather as a network of trade routes.
But just as now, the goods traveled more than the people who traded them: Very few traders traversed the entire silk road.
Instead, they'd move back and forth between towns, selling to traders who'd take the goods further toward their destination, with everybody marking up prices along the way.
