Note sull'episodio
The Silk Road was not a single highway, was not named until 1877, and for thousands of years was not mainly about silk. This deep dive unpacks the real, decentralized web of desert paths, mountain passes and sea routes that wired together the ancient world.
We explore how Han military campaigns and Zhang Qian's search for heavenly horses opened the routes, how relay trade worked like a bucket brigade, and how Sogdian merchants became the ultimate middlemen. We also cover the Maritime Silk Road, Buddhist monasteries as safe havens, silkworm smuggling, the Black Death, the Pax Mongolica and the Ottoman capture of Constantinople.
- Why historian Warwick Ball criticizes the term Silk Road coined by Ferdinand von Richthofen
- Seneca the Younger's moral panic over sheer Chinese silk in Rome
- How Austronesian sailors built sewn-plank ships to cross the Indian Ocean
- The monks who reportedly smuggled silkworm eggs in hollow canes to Constantinople
- How blocked overland routes pushed Europe into the Age of Discovery