The Silk Road: A New History

"The Silk Road traversed the territory around the Taklamakan Desert in Northwest China and included the routes that connected China with Iran . My book focuses on seven Silk Road sites and proceeds in chronological order. It starts in Northwest China, about the second century AD, and continues up through the age of Marco Polo. Many people erroneously think that the Silk Road connected China with Rome. There is very little evidence of direct contact between the Han dynasty or its successors and Rome. But there’s lots of evidence of contact between China and Iran. “Paper, which was invented in China about the second century BC, was coming into use during the time of the Silk Road.” At the end of each chapter, I include a collection of selected primary sources for each Silk Road site, some very rare, which give readers the chance to read the words of, for instance, Chinese pilgrims and Marco Polo. Absolutely true. Paper, which was invented in China about the second century BC, was coming into use during the time of the Silk Road. By the third century AD, people were writing letters on paper. One of the reasons we know that is that this whole region was very dry, so the paper is preserved and so is cloth, as are some dead bodies and skin and hair. There’s also a very high level of preservation of food. We have petrified dumplings that have survived since the year 600. There’s a picture of that in the book. A lot, but not much silk. When silk was found along this route, it was rarely decorative cloths but often simple white silk, which was used as money because of a shortage of coins. What was moving along the route? Spices, aromatics, fragrances, precious metals, like gold and silver, and ammonium chloride, which was used to soften leather and also to reduce the melting temperature of metals. So, one of the reasons the Silk Road is a misnomer is that silk was not the main good moving along. Another reason it’s a misnomer is that nobody used that word at that time. It’s a term that was coined at the end of the 19th century."