The Silk Road Combined Trade, Adventure, and Culture

To me the Silk Road conjures up a Hollywood image of spitting camels, tents folding up in the sand storm, mirages of oases, and luxury goods worth murdering for. Crossing the desert with only a vague idea of where the next source of water is takes a brave soul today, but before overhead planes, cellphones, and decent maps, it must have been even more intimidating. I suppose that's most of why I find the silk road -- even up to the time of Marco Polo in A.D. 1280 -- fascinating. But there is more. Recent books lead me to believe that the great Steppe nomads bred with locals, adapting a creole that became the Indo-European languages of Europe, the Mediterranean, and India. Through their dependence on horses and the war chariot, the nomads may have carried their idea of writing even further -- all the way to China. This language traffic was done along the roads used for trade, since the Scythian warlords could hope to buy the loyalty of their followers with exotic presents. In addition to trade and language, the traffic running from roughly Syria to Afghanistan to India to China allowed the very different people to share other aspects of their culture, including those little "bugs" that lead to pandemics. Read more about the Silk Roads.

Taklamakan Desert along the Silk Road CC Kiwi Mikex at Flickr.com