The Silk Road
The Silk Road dated from around the second century BCE and was a network of land routes that linked China with the West. The phrase ‘Silk Road’ wasn’t actually coined until the nineteenth century and it remains a somewhat nebulous concept, but one that is grounded in the historic reality of (largely) East–West exchange.
It’s also a misnomer, as the route is an intricate network of tracks and trails and roads covering an enormous area. From the western side, Alexander the Great extended his empire eastwards by means of military might, invading the Persian Empire in 334 BCE, followed by India in 326 BCE. The Persian Empire at that stage was huge and encompassed Anatolia, Egypt and much of central Asia south of the Caspian. Although Alexander’s new empire didn’t last long after his death, his legacy was a continuing Greek influence and the Hellenistic Seleucid dynasty, which went on to rule for three centuries in various forms. Eventually, the dynasty was supplanted by the Romans from the West and the Parthians from the East. The Parthian Empire lasted until 224 CE, and was at the centre of the Silk Road.To the east, the Chinese Han dynasty, which lasted from 206 BCE to 202 CE, was the second Imperial dynasty, and one of great cultural achievement. The Han Chinese had also pushed frontiers far, reaching a province named Xiyu (now Xinjiang).59 The routes passed through difficult terrain, skirting the Gobi Desert to the south and then to the eastern edge of the Taklamakan Desert, where they passed both north and south and converged again at Kashgar at the western end of the desert, which lay in a strategic location at the junction of the Himalayas, Tien Shan Mountains and Hindu Kush. These routes to the West were physically very challenging, so the hardy twin-humped Bactrian camels were the vehicle of choice for caravans transiting the Silk Road routes.
Although silk was the most valuable Chinese export to the West, many other goods were also traded, as well as food – and spice (small in bulk/weight and therefore easily transportable, but highly valuable). The archaeobotanical evidence for the early movement of spice along the Silk Road routes is modest, though the presence of non-native spices in many countries in the first two millennia BCE is highly suggestive of arrival by trade, or movements of people, and the overland movement of spices would have been a contributor to this. One of the legacies of Alexander’s incursions into northern India was to increase botanical knowledge about spices and herbs.60