#1

“I have not told half of what I saw.”

-Marco Polo

The Silk Road is interesting because it simply has so much variety to offer. The routes are surrounded by great mountain ranges such as the Pamir, Tian Shan, and Hindu Kush. While in the centre we have desert, and these same routes need to diverge and split away north and south so as to escape passing directly through the blistering heat of the Taklamakan. There are popular claims that takla makan means “go in and you'll never come out” in Uyghur, a frightening thought for a desert that does not even compare in size to the nearby Gobi.

Along with geographical extremes the Silk Road offers a melting pot of human interaction. A simple visit to one of the many bazaars at a location such as the oasis city of Kashgar would show you proof; different groups of Turkic, East Asian, Mongol, Iranian, and maybe even European peoples all intertwined. Such ethnic diversity is common nowadays but in the 17th century it would have truly been a wondrous sight. The first chapter of our reading really gives us a good understanding and general feeling of what the Silk Routes physically were.

The second chapter then continues and focuses more on the aspects of trading and the benefits to human need that the Silk Road attested to. I really enjoyed the description of the process of gathering silk, it makes you understand how truly valuable and delicate it is, overall a good namesake in reference to the Routes themselves. Along with silk many other precious stones, materials, and spices were traded daily and brought to new nations. The Silk Road allowed for an early system of greater trade and a form of globalization unbeknownst to the region at the time.

Re-mentioning again the melting pot of ethnicities in the region brings us finally to the third chapter. When Alexander set foot into Bactria what did he think? Seeing as he married Roxana he clearly enjoyed his new found cultural awareness. It's great to imagine how the Venetians had to have fealt, listening to the returned Marco Polo romanticize about the Orient. The same goes for the Chinese, hearing resemblances of the mysterious Da Qin to their own Empire from the mouth of the legendary Gan Ying. All of these occurences were made possible because of the Silk Road, and I can not wait to learn more about it's history.