THE SILK ROAD

The Silk Road

Tonight I would like to share a little bit of history with all of you. The silk Road.

The silk road wasn't meant to be a business connection,it was for war!

War between the Han Chinese and the HUN tribe.

The HUN tribe from the research I have done we could guess was the ancestor of the Mongolian people.

Even the history professor can't be sure about this, though.

It was a German geographer Ferdinand Von Richthofen called it The Silk Road in 1877. Before that, it had a few names, like silk road, china road, spices road.... etc...

More than 2000 years ago in the year BC 158, A Chinese man called Zhang Qian was on his way as an ambassador to ask the DA YUE SHI people to help his country fight the HUN people.

He went from Xian the capital city of the Han dynasty to the West. He didn't know exactly where to find them. All he knows is to keep going west.

But he was captured by the HUN people and held for 12 years, then he managed to escape. He did not forget his duty, so he continued on his way to the DA YUE SHI country.

When he found them he found that after this 12years the DA YUE SHI ( The Afghanistan) people didn't want to fight any wars any more.

So he went back and reported to his Emporer. He told him that the Da Yue Shi peoples wanted to exchange things to improve their lives instead of making war.

The silk road began from then.

Actually the silk road has three main parts. It is not a single road. It can be thought of as in three sections. East, Middle and West.

The East part is from Xian to Dun Huang. I think many of you know about Xian, it is where thousands of soldier figurines were found in an Emporer's grave.

This part is the flat, easy part of the road.



The middle part is three different roads itself. A Northern one, a Central one and a Southern one.

Why? Because from Dunhuang go further west is very difficult. There is the Taklamakan desert in front of you stretching to the West for 1000km and bordered by the Tianshan mountains on the North and the Kunlun mountains on the South.

So there came to be a Northern road north of the Northern Tianshan mountains.

A central road South of the Tianshan mountains and along the northern fringe of the desert.

And a southern road south of the desert and north of the Kunlun mountains.


Those Northern Tianshan Mountains average about 5000 metres above sea level. Up on the mountains it is snowing all the year. And those mountains stretch for 2500km East/West and are 250km wide, North/South.

You can imagine how hard the condition there are. Back in those days the business men have to get round these mountains somehow - no cars, no planes, no rail, so some went north of the mountains travelling East-West though Russian Territory. This is the north line of the silk road in the middle section of the silk road.



The 15th largest desert of the world the Taklamakan desert is 1000kms, long and about 370km wide. It covers an area of 337,600 square kilometres. It is about the same size as New Zealand. They couldn't get through the desert.

So some made a road between the Taklamakan desert and the Tianshan mountains, south of the mountains all the way to Iran.

This is the central road in the middle section of the 'Silk Road'.

Kunlun mountain are also about 5000metres above sea level, the same as the Tianshan mountains. In fact the highest mountain in the Kunlun range is only 300metres lower than the highest Tianshan peak.

But the weather in the Kunlun is even harder than in the Tianshan mountains. So could not be travelled through, either.

Some the traders made a road along the southern border of the desert along the northern fringe of the Kunlun mountains, all the way to Iran, this is the south road of the central section of the silk road.


And the last, the third section is the western section.

There are here two roads, two different ways to go.

The northern road goes from Russia go through to the middle east, Caspian area. The Black sea at Turkey. Then from Turkey to Europe.

The southern road goes from Iran through Baghdad, Damascus, the Red sea area, to Cairo, Egypt and from there spreads to Africa and Italy.

And also many of them went down south east Asia as well.

This road not only exchanged silk but also pottery, tea, gold, silver, and agricultural products.

And along this more than 7000 kms of road the culture, the civilization, the technology, have all been impacted.

The first paper factory built in Italy in the year 1466. used technology from Han Chinese.

And coming back along the Silk Road Grapes, Carrots, Black pepper, Spinach, Cucumber, and all sorts kinds of nuts are some of the things that have been transplanted to China from the western end of the Silk Road.

Lapis lazuli, once a highly valued blue gemstone was originally from Afghanistan and was transported to the rest of the world via the Silk Road. When transported to India, it became a Religious keepsake. In old Greece, Egypt and Rome, Lapislazuli became the status symbol for the Nobility.

Islam, Muslim, Zoro-astri-an-ism came to China via this road.

The silk road kept Friendship between the world for 2000 years. Although the industrialization of the world has replaced many of its trading functions the middle parts of it still functions as of old and trade goes on as it has done for 2000 years... or would, will do, if there can be no wars in this area.