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We should definitely not call it the silk road. The name "silk road" doesn't fit all the elements of what happened during the silk road, especially the transportation elements. The routes to the different world zones were called the "silk road" because the routes started from China and they were known for their silk. Although it shouldn't be called a silk road because the transportation or trading from China. Although, later people started trading ideas, goods, materials, and technologies around the world, but mainly in Eurasia. More and more countries started getting involved through the routes and expanded towards the Afro-Eurasia, creating different types of routes across the world zones. Some routes were on land and some were on water. Many civilizations from different zones used domesticated animals to travel across these routes, walk, and even with boats. The silk road impacted the collective learning across many diverse people from different zones, with different ways of transportation and traded many different goods, not just silk from China. Therefore, the silk road should not actually be called the "silk road".

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movement seems largely to have been that of Westerners towards the East

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The Silk Road was the beginning of the trade system of the world. Not only was silk transported on the silk roads, but a wide variety of other such as aspects like religion, culture and even diseases were also passed amongst civilizations. One of the things that the silk road transported, which is also the basis of this article is religion. Buddhism spread along the silk road as the main traders of were Buddhist. Whenever they traded, their religion went with them. The differences in culture could be seen through the  on how people interacted with each other. After the mongol period, the amount of buddhist traders decreased therefore buddhism on the silk road diminished. Not only Buddhism, but Islam was also one of the main religions of the Silk Road. Muslim people under the supervision of their leaders were the main people to spread Buddhism on the silk road. When they traded, their religion went with them, the same thing which happened with the buddhist. Even Nestorianism and Manichaeism was on the Silk Road. There are still archeological remains today, including a shrine which is still operational in China. When the Chinese acquired the power of the silk road, the developed many technologies leading to trade or more items and goods.

QCI
Questions:
- Besides the positive things, such as resourses, were negative things, such as diseases, also spread along the Silk Road?
- Besides the Silk road, were there any other secret trade routes which people were unaware about?

Connections:
This connects to the current trade system of the word. Everything originated from the Silk Road. Today there are millions of trade systems, and many things are traded among those routes. If these trade systems never existed, the worlds trade systems wouldn't have been a thing today.

Insights:
Without the trade units, the world wouldnt have been able to operate. Without this new technologies and developments, this world could have very easily fallen.

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-First of all, the Chinese seem to have acquired technologies such as wheeled transportation, forms of metallurgy, and so on from Western traders.
-Conversely, such technologies as paper production and gunpowder were transmitted later from China to the West.

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- movement seems largely to have been that of Westerners towards the East
- bringing back foreign influences to China, and not the reverse
- Buddhism and Islam were in some respects profoundly altered and reshaped to meet Chinese needs

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-Black death seemed to have originated from Silk Road through rodents
-Also theory that flea eggs held disease and went from Central Asia to Middle East infecting other rats and spreading disaster

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Most definitely not.  In calling it the Silk Road, though silk was one key element that travelled along it and gained commerce for many, you disregard the rest of the unbelievable spectrum of things that travelled down what you could call a sort of figurative path of early globalization.  Take religion for example.  The very reason that there is such great diversity of religion throughout the world today is because of beginnings in the Silk Road, where Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam etc. were all traded and came to be in various countries through the arrival of foreign travellers and even items.  Another was innovation.  The very idea of things like paper, or the water wheel, inventions that allowed for easier work and smarter advancement, would never have left their origins without the Silk Road.  It is these things, as well as many more, that show the great variety of elements that were brought to light in new places due to the silk road.  Arguably one of the very origins of advanced globalization, the silk road unlocked a more sophisticated way of human communication that would forever impact the flow of collective learning and the trading of ideas, ideals, and information... not just silk.

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The Silk Road was the embodiment of globalization and brought along with it the great spread of multiple aspects of society including culture, religion, and innovation.  Some key spreading concepts included the inventions of paper and the waterwheel, spreading for their ingenuity and developing their own unique twists in the countries they were brought to.  Even food travelled along the silk road, causing for the great diversity, as well as importation that we now see translated in today's food market.  Without the initial spread of foods that only grew in a specific country no one would have the knowledge of that food except for the people in it's country of origin, and nowadays no other countries would have innovated to create the land able to cultivate or produce that food. However, what came with all of this was also the spread of disease, most notably the black death, which was thought to have travelled down the silk road too. Now, we see this as one of the worst plagues to ever hit the Earth, but think about this, would we have ever gained our immunities/awareness to disease without epidemics like these? If we look at it that way then in a cruel sense you could see the plague as a positive form of globalization to come out of the Silk road, couldn't you?  All in all, the Silk Road served a purpose that truly impacted the world today in ways that never would have been without the connection of human intellect.  The spread of ideas is something that is still at large today, however, the Silk Road, very much a place holder in the time of globalization, is an era that really sparked advanced human teamwork for the first time, and still resonates it's additions to the world today.

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-Loads of different foodstuffs spread as well
-Apples via steppe belt to Kazakstan
-Oranges from China to Mediterranean world

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We should most definitely not call this accumulation of trade units the "Silk Road". This name doesn't fit the description for what the trade systems were actually for. Although silk was one of the items being traded on the silk roads,, it certainly want the only thing. Not only did the silk road transport a wide variety of items beside silk, it also spread religion across the world as well as negative things such as fatal diseases. In the early days of the silk roads, religion was one of the biggest things being spread. Some of the most prominent religions were Buddhism and Islam. Most of the merchants who traded on the silk roads were buddhist and muslim and their religion and cultures traveled with them. When the amount of these merchants decreased, the religion diminished. The silk roads also carried diseases. Products got contaminated when they exchanged hands country to country, the diseases went with them. Since varieties of things were being transported across the silk roads instead of just silk, the silk roads shouldn't actually be referred to as the "silk roads"

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Questions: Chinese goods had an huge impact towards a lot of countries, although, was their ever where it brought a negative impact to a country?

Since silk was sort of like "gold" to other countries, were their any time when a different country tried to steal the silk worms from the Chinese?

Connection:
This connection to the real world trading between China and other countries. If you notice, majority of the products imported from the US and most countries around the world, it all says "made in china". This is an example of how a lot of Chinese products were introduced to other counties. For instance, the Great Britain is known for their tea because of the Chinese during the silk road times.

Insight:
All the positive things that occurred in the silk road started all because of China. China were the pioneers of contributing and influencing with their science, technology, and handicrafts, such as silk, furniture.

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-There are still archeological remains of Nestorianism and Manichaeism .
-A few years ago,  a Manichaean shrine was found in southeastern coastal China

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- spread due to the activities of Muslim merchants operating under the protection and favoritism of local Muslim rulers.
-missionary activity of Sufi preachers, who often competed successfully for the authority held by traditional shamans.

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-Invented in Roman Syria
-Ingenious, because allowed for great workload with no outside human/animal effort
-This invention spread rapidly along the silk road as well, examples in Spain and Yellow River, China

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-Afghanistan mainly Buddhist before the Muslim conquests in the 7th century CE
- Silk Road economy was mainly in the hands of Buddhist traders and the monasteries
- After the Mongol period, the buddhists diminished.

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- main lingua franca was Soghdian
- an Iranian language thatsurvives today in the Yaghnob valley of Tajikistan
- In Islamic times the lingua franca became Persian.

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Before China's foods were very limited, although, thanks to the silk road, , new vegetables were transplanted in inland China and became available to the Chinese.

Many of the Chinese plants contains the character “胡 hu”. When at first these exotic plants were introduced to China from western regions, "Hu" was the name given by the ethic peoples of the north and west of central china.

China's tea was contributed to the worlds food culture. China and the dutch of east India influenced the Europeans and made tea available to the Europeans in 1610, that why now days, Europe is the most important market for tea.

In China, spice was used widely in medicines, cosmetic, scents, etc.  Emperor Wudi of Han Dynasty was so addicted to spice that he ordered his ministers to hold a piece of spice when reporting to him at the daily morning meeting. Main sources of spice in the world are the Middle East, India, and east Africa. And the ancient Chinese did not develop the habit of burning incense until the Silk Road made spice available.
The maritime foreign trade of ancient China also had important impact on Chinese medicines. The quantity of medicines imported from overseas increased greatly ever since Tang Dynasty, which are used nowadays as well.

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Handicrafts were exchanged on the silk road. China's well known products were:
- Silk
- Porcelain (Ceramic material; pots)
- lacquer ware
- gold and silver: luxuries

By 4th century AD, it had become fashionable for European aristocratic (high society) man to wear clothes made of silk.
- The Arabic canon The Koran acclaimed silk as the dress material of the paradise.

Many of the famous Kings and noble men had a passion over the oriental arts. Furniture, vases, and china ware from China was found in court rooms and high society places.
- Lifestyle of the Han people was influenced by these imports via the Silk Road.
- The Chinese started sitting on stools or chairs, as compared against formerly kneeling on their own heels on the ground.

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Chinese were the pioneers of contributions in the areas of science and technology, influencing other cultures along the silk road.

Ancient China have greatest inventions and techniques:
- compass
-dynamite
- paper making & printing
-water well drilling
-cast iron
- Chinese medicine
Many of these exported inventions impacted Western Civilization.
- Dynamite were used in Europe in wars, triggering a revolution in weapons and warfare and giving the European powers an edge over the Orient.

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The Product of The "Silk Road"

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Silk Road Cultural Exchanges: Science and Technology

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-The term Silk Road was created by, Ferdinand von Richtofen, a german explorer of the late 19th century.
-a loose network of pre-modern overland trade routes
-stretched from the Mediterranean to East Asia during the Roman-Han and Mongol periods

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-Paper, invented in Han Dynasty, allowed for infinitely more advanced writing surface that was kept within the walls of China for long time
-When paper-making establishment was set up in Samarkhand, however, it travelled down the silk road and influenced other parts of world too
-Development caused for invention of printing which largely impacted Buddhist religion, and influenced British printing

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-Silk road responsible for great transportation of people, ideas, beliefs, innovations etc.

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"Religions of the Silk Road"

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An Interview with author Richard C. Foltz.

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"Silk Road Spreading Ideas and Innovations"

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by John Major

Good ideas and innovation travel easily-and far. Historically, these ideas spread along trade routes. This essay looks at the great Eurasian Silk Roads as a transmitter of people, goods, ideas, beliefs and inventions.

Good ideas travel easilyand far along trade routes, and the Silk Road was no exception to that rule. A famous example of a Chinese invention that helped to transform the world is paper. Paper was invented during the Han dynasty, probably just at the time the Silk Road trade was beginning to flourish. (Many accounts ascribe the invention of paper to a Latter Han official at the beginning of the 2nd century CE, but actual paper at least two centuries older than that has been archaeologically excavated from Han tombs.) Far superior to the narrow wooden strips or hard-to-handle rolls of silk that the Chinese had previously used for writing, paper soon became the writing material of choice throughout China and East Asia. It was found also in the Buddhist temples of China's northwest, but seemed not to make inroads beyond that for a long time, perhaps in part because the Chinese tried to protect the secret of its manufacture, and perhaps in part also because other writing materials, such as parchment and papyrus, were well established in the west.

But under the Mongols in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a group of Chinese workmen set up a papermaking establishment in Samarkand. Their product quickly spread by trade and imitation, and paper soon supplanted other writing materials in most of western Eurasia.

In China, the invention of paper stimulated the invention of printing, sometime during the 6th century CE-a development energetically supported by Buddhism, according to which the duplication of sacred texts was an act of religious merit. The re-invention of printing in Europe centuries later did not employ East Asian-style printing technology, but it may have been stimulated by accounts of Chinese printing that could have circulated in the Middle East.

Another invention that spread entirely across Eurasia was the noria, or irrigation waterwheel. This simple, ingenious device, invented in Roman Syria, consists of a vertical waterwheel to the rim of which are attached a series of pots or tubes. As the current of a river rotates the wheel, the pots fill with water at the bottom of the cycle and empty into a chute at the top; a large noria can lift water as much as forty feet with no input of human or animal energy. This inspired invention was obviously a good idea, and rapidly spread along the Silk Road and its tributaries. There is a famous example in Toledo, Spain, others along the upper reaches of the Yellow River in China, and many more in between.

Foodstuffs also count in this category of the travel of ideas and techniques Apples spread, in prehistoric times via the steppe belt, in both directions from the region of modern-day Kazakhstan; oranges went (via the maritime route) from China to the Mediterranean world; grapes went from the western reaches of the Silk Road to China.

These examples and dozens more that could be mentioned make the point clear: ideas, inventions, devices and techniques spread readily and far along the Silk Road, and the traffic was very much a two way, or perhaps one should say a multi-way, street. In the process the Silk Road enriched not just the merchants who carried and exchanged goods, but the people of countries and cultures all across Eurasia.

It is perhaps worth noting, however, that long-distance trade can have unexpectedly bad side effects as well as direct beneficial effects. For example, the Black Death plague that devastated Europe in the 14th century is believed to have come via the Silk Road from Central Asia, where plague is endemic among local rodents. One theory holds that a load of marmot pelts (destined to be used on fur-trimmed garments), contaminated with plague-bearing flea eggs, was brought from somewhere in Central Asia to a Middle Eastern port. There the eggs hatched into fleas that infested some local rats; some of the rats eventually went on shipboard and were carried to port cities in Italy. There the plague spread, via fleas, to other rats, and then to people; and a disaster was in the making.

Additional Background Reading on Asia

Why were there so many Chinese fans in the bleachers at this year's FIFA World Cup, when the Chinese team wasn't even on the field? Student Jerry Tian gives us his perspective.

by John Major
Good ideas and innovation travel easily-and far. Historically, these ideas spread along trade routes. This essay looks at the great Eurasian Silk Roads as a transmitter of people, goods, ideas, beliefs and inventions.

Good ideas travel easilyand far along trade routes, and the Silk Road was no exception to that rule. A famous example of a Chinese invention that helped to transform the world is paper. Paper was invented during the Han dynasty, probably just at the time the Silk Road trade was beginning to flourish. (Many accounts ascribe the invention of paper to a Latter Han official at the beginning of the 2nd century CE, but actual paper at least two centuries older than that has been archaeologically excavated from Han tombs.) Far superior to the narrow wooden strips or hard-to-handle rolls of silk that the Chinese had previously used for writing, paper soon became the writing material of choice throughout China and East Asia. It was found also in the Buddhist temples of China's northwest, but seemed not to make inroads beyond that for a long time, perhaps in part because the Chinese tried to protect the secret of its manufacture, and perhaps in part also because other writing materials, such as parchment and papyrus, were well established in the west.

But under the Mongols in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a group of Chinese workmen set up a papermaking establishment in Samarkand. Their product quickly spread by trade and imitation, and paper soon supplanted other writing materials in most of western Eurasia.

In China, the invention of paper stimulated the invention of printing, sometime during the 6th century CE-a development energetically supported by Buddhism, according to which the duplication of sacred texts was an act of religious merit. The re-invention of printing in Europe centuries later did not employ East Asian-style printing technology, but it may have been stimulated by accounts of Chinese printing that could have circulated in the Middle East.

Another invention that spread entirely across Eurasia was the noria, or irrigation waterwheel. This simple, ingenious device, invented in Roman Syria, consists of a vertical waterwheel to the rim of which are attached a series of pots or tubes. As the current of a river rotates the wheel, the pots fill with water at the bottom of the cycle and empty into a chute at the top; a large noria can lift water as much as forty feet with no input of human or animal energy. This inspired invention was obviously a good idea, and rapidly spread along the Silk Road and its tributaries. There is a famous example in Toledo, Spain, others along the upper reaches of the Yellow River in China, and many more in between.

Foodstuffs also count in this category of the travel of ideas and techniques Apples spread, in prehistoric times via the steppe belt, in both directions from the region of modern-day Kazakhstan; oranges went (via the maritime route) from China to the Mediterranean world; grapes went from the western reaches of the Silk Road to China.

These examples and dozens more that could be mentioned make the point clear: ideas, inventions, devices and techniques spread readily and far along the Silk Road, and the traffic was very much a two way, or perhaps one should say a multi-way, street. In the process the Silk Road enriched not just the merchants who carried and exchanged goods, but the people of countries and cultures all across Eurasia.

It is perhaps worth noting, however, that long-distance trade can have unexpectedly bad side effects as well as direct beneficial effects. For example, the Black Death plague that devastated Europe in the 14th century is believed to have come via the Silk Road from Central Asia, where plague is endemic among local rodents. One theory holds that a load of marmot pelts (destined to be used on fur-trimmed garments), contaminated with plague-bearing flea eggs, was brought from somewhere in Central Asia to a Middle Eastern port. There the eggs hatched into fleas that infested some local rats; some of the rats eventually went on shipboard and were carried to port cities in Italy. There the plague spread, via fleas, to other rats, and then to people; and a disaster was in the making.

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by John Major Good ideas and innovation travel easily-and far. Historically, these ideas spread along trade routes. This essay looks at the great Eurasian Silk Roads as a transmitter of people, goods, ideas, beliefs and inventions. Good ideas travel easilyand far along trade routes, and the Silk Road was no exception to that rule.