Describe the significance of the Silk Roads in Afro-Eurasia.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Although both small- and large-scale trade networks andrelationships existed in myriad locations across Afro-Eurasia throughout the era, the most significant Afro-Eurasian exchange web was that of the Silk Roads. From the beginning of human history, theexchange of information and ideas among diverse peoplesand cultures has been a prime mover in promoting changethrough Collective Learning. As the smaller exchanges ofthe early Era of Agrarian Civilizations began to expand,the enhanced Collective Learning that followed led to more and more significant changes in the material, artistic, social,and spiritual domains of human history. The most influential of these intensified exchange networks emergedaround a trading hub located deep in Central Asia, alongthe Silk Roads, which crisscrossed much of Afro-Eurasia.

The trans-civilizational contacts that occurred through thisexchange resulted in the most significant Collective Learningso far experienced by humans.Although some trade and migration had occurred alongthese routes for millennia, the first really important periodof the Silk Roads was between roughly 50 BCE and 250 CE,when material and intellectual exchange took place betweenthe Chinese, Indian, Kushan, Iranian, steppe-nomadic, and
Mediterranean worlds. The demise of the western Romanand Han Chinese Empires early in the first millennium CEresulted in several centuries of less regular contact, but asecond “Silk Roads era” subsequently operated for severalcenturies between ca. 600 and ca. 1000 CE, connectingChina, India, Southeast Asia, the Dar al-Islam, and theByzantine Empire into another vast web based on overlandand maritime trade.

The primary function of the Silk Roadsduring both periods was to facilitate trade. Not only materialgoods were carried along the Silk Roads, however, butintellectual, spiritual, cultural, biological and technologicalideas as well. Arguably it is these less tangible exchangesthat have been of greater significance to world history, asthe following few examples might suggest.
An example of significant intellectual exchange facilitatedby commercial activity occurred when Arab merchantsbegan operating in India in the fifth century CE.As a product of what world historian Lynda Shaffer callssouthernization (the movement of material and nonmaterialproducts from Africa and India into northern Eurasia),Arab merchants replaced Roman numerals with the moreflexible Indian numbering system they encountered there.Indian numbers, and particularly the concept of zero whichthe Indians had invented, facilitated more rapid and complexcalculations, and they eventually spread all over theworld. Because the numbers came to the West via Arabmerchants and scholars, they became known in Europeas Arabic numbers, although the Arabs called them Hindinumbers. This particular exchange was of profound importanceto world history and helped facilitate the emergenceof the modern economy.

Perhaps the most important spiritual consequence ofmaterial Silk Roads exchanges was the spread of religionsacross the world zone, particularly Mahayana Buddhism,which moved from India through Central Asia to Chinaand East Asia. An associated cultural exchange that ledto enhanced Collective Learning was the spread of artisticideas and techniques, particularly the diffusion eastward ofsyncretistic sculptural styles that developed in the secondcentury CE in the workshops of Gandhara (in Pakistan)and Mathura (in India), where the first ever representationof the Buddha was conceived. (The terms syncretism andsyncretistic refer to the blending together of traits fromvarious cultural traditions to create a new culture.)

The major biological consequence of Silk Roads tradewas the spread of disease and plague. Not only did the passingof disease bacteria along the Silk Roads by traders play a significant role in the depopulation and subsequent declineof both the Han and Roman Empires, but the exposure ofmillions of humans to these pathogens meant that antibodiesspread extensively throughout the Afro-Eurasian worldzone, and important immunities were built up within populations.These immunities proved incredibly significant inthe premodern age, when Muslim, Chinese, and particularlyEuropean traders and explorers carried Afro-Eurasian diseasesto the other world zones, with disastrous consequencesfor native populations. These four brief examples all supportthe claim that the Silk Roads and Indian Ocean networksprofoundly affected the subsequent shape and direction ofall human history.