As we’ve seen, the Silk Road was a series of interconnected, ancient trade routes that
connected China with the Mediterranean Sea and with the civilizations of the Mediterranean.
It covered more than 5,000 miles by land and sea, and trade along this route was essential
for the development of China; Egypt; Iran; Iraq; India; and Rome.
It would become the foundation of global trade in the classical; medieval; and early modern
periods.
They traded things like silk, spices, and horses, salt – different commodities and
goods that would become essential to this global trade network.
We also saw that the Silk Road traded unintentional or created unintentional exchanges of things
like religion or disease – for example, the Black Death moved along the Silk Road.
So we’re very clear that the Silk Road was an incredibly important part the classical
world, and was essential to understanding the foundations of world history.
But there are other stories from the Silk Road that don’t always make it into textbooks,
that aren’t as well known, but that have nonetheless shaped the world around us.
For example, let’s talk about the story of apples.
So today apples are one of the most ubiquitous plants on the planet, one of the most ubiquitous
fruits in grocery stores across the globe.
There are more than 7,500 types of apples.
So did you know that the modern apple has its roots on the Silk Road – specifically
in the central part of Asia known as Kazakhstan; wild apples grew on 60-foot trees in the wilds
of Kazakhstan, just west of the Tian Shan Mountains.
They would fall from these trees and travelers along the Silk Road would pick them up and
eat them.
As they moved along the Silk Road they would spread the seeds of these apples, and because
apples are heterozygous the falling seeds would spread different types of apples all
up and down the Silk Road.
As they spread west, they crossed with European crabapples creating varieties of apples that
were larger, firmer, a little bit more sour than the Kazakhstan apple.
As they spread east, they crossed with other Asian wild apples and crabapples creating
soft, sweet, dessert apples.
They became an important part of the Roman Empire, and as Rome conquered Europe the apples
– these crossed apples – would be spread into Europe.
They would go as far West as Britain, and as far east as China – and when Western
Europe conquered the Americas in the Age of Conquest, or the Age of Exploration, the Europeans
would bring them to the, would bring apples to the New World.
The genetic diversity of applies allowed them to survive in many climates, creating what
we have already identified as the ubiquity of the apple in the modern diet.
Or we could tell the story of polo.
Polo has long been associated with horsemanship along the Silk Road.
Horses were essential to the Silk Road, and one of the ways of using horses – in a leisure
format – was with the playing of sports that resembled the modern game of polo.
Its origins have generally been attributed to Central Asia, to Iran, and Baltistan, to
the region where Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, China, and Tibet meet.
It was introduced to China in the 7th century, and became an important part of life at the
Dang Court.
The Chinese transmitted polo, which they called pit ball, to Korea and Japan, and polo horses
became an important trade commodity, became an important trade item for polo-playing Chinese
aristocrats.
Europe would encounter this game of polo, or hit ball, as the British took control of
India, and this game, which was called buzkashi, was transmitted back to Britain, modified
into the more modern concept or modern game of polo that we can identify today, and then
transmitted to the United States.
Or perhaps we could look at the story of the fiddle.
Turkic and Mongolian horsemen from Central Asia were probably the world’s first fiddlers.
They played hollowed out gourds and two-stringed, upright fiddles strung with horsehair strings
and played with horsehair bows.
Over time those fiddles became increasingly elaborate, often featuring a horsehead carved
at the end of the neck.
In fact, the horsehead fiddle’s origin is a legend well known among musicians in Mongolia,
and it was transmitted along the Silk Road.
According to legend, a herder received the gift of a magical, winged horse.
He would mount it at night after a long day of tending and herding sheep, and fly to distant
places to meet his beloved.
But the story goes that the woman became jealous of the herder, had the horses wings cut off,
the horse fell from the air and died, and from its bones the grieving herder made a
fiddle on which he played beautiful and poignant songs about his horse.
Or maybe we tell the story of Aesop’s fables.
Aesop’s fables are a collection of fables, of stories with learning value.
Fables are stories that feature an animal or creature, often anthropomorphized – given
human qualities, that offers a moral lesson to the reader.
Aesop’s fables are generally associated with Aesop, a slave and storyteller believed
to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE¸ and those stories wouldn’t
just be contained to Greece but would spread all along the Silk Road.
For example, one of the most famous of Aesop’s fables was the story of the man with the goose
who laid the golden eggs – and the story goes, there once was a man who owned a wonderful
goose.
Every morning the goose laid for him a big, beautiful egg – an egg made of pure, shiny,
solid gold, and every morning the man would collect those golden eggs and little by little,
he began to grow rich.
But he also began to grow greedy.
He wanted more.
My goose has all those golden eggs inside her, he kept thinking – why not get them
all at once?
And one day he couldn’t take it any longer, so he grabbed the goose and he killed her,
but there were no golden eggs inside her.
Why did I do that, the man cried, now there will be no more golden eggs.
These stories were transmitted from Greece to Rome to Europe to the Americas.
Translations have been found in India and China.
So these stories were transmitted along the Silk Road creating this sense, this important
sense, in which the global trading network known as the Silk Road shaped the world in
which we live, and not just in economic terms.
The connections between East and West that developed along this trade route transcended
economics, and engaged culture; literature; religion, and would become the foundations
of the connections between East and West that would serve as the foundation of world history.
Thank you.