Nick Shaw
AP World Silk Road Essay
September 14, 2014
The size of the road, the goods traded, the purpose of the road, and the economic benefit were all examples of continuities and changes along the Silk Roads from 200 B.C.E. to 1450 C.E.
A significant change that occurred on the Silk Roads throughout 200 BCE to 1450 CE was the size of the trading network as a whole. In the beginning of the Silk Road’s history, it began as a small path and was traveled on by merchants with luxury goods to sell. However, the Silk Road became more popular and the demand for products from the far stretches of the land grew immensely. Thus, the Silk Road evolved into a vast, complicated series of paths that linked various civilizations together. The enlargement of the Silk Road proved very influential to the ideas and goods spread, because if the road would have stayed small, there would have been no globalization or interactions between such distant cultures.
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In the beginning of the Silk Road’s history, merchants would sell only luxurious items to the upper class people of other cultures such as silk, spices, porcelain, gold, etc. However, as time evolved the people of different cultures learned how to make one another’s luxurious item, such as the ability to make Chinese silk spread to Persia, India, Japan, and Korean. Once this happened, there was a demand for newer more sought after items, thus the goods spread along the Silk Road evolved. This expansion of knowledge impacted history by forcing people producing the goods to change their ways to serve the demand of the buyers, which is still a concept used