Conclusion

Summary

The Conclusion summarizes each of the preceding chapters, and reinforces the argument that, during a period of roughly three and a half centuries, between the late-second century BCE and the mid-third century CE, many of the human communities dwelling across the vast reaches of Eurasia found themselves linked together into an interconnected system of exchanges via a network of routes known today as the Silk Roads. This First Silk Roads Era led to the most significant transregional commercial and cultural interactions experienced by humans to that point in history. Silk was the most important material commodity that was moved along this network of land and maritime routes, and that fact justifies the continued use of the label coined in the nineteenth century by Ferdinand von Richthofen, the ‘Silk Roads’. But what ultimately makes this period of ancient history so important was the exchange of non-material ‘commodities’ that occurred in parallel with the commercial interactions. Because of the demand for silk and other luxury goods, a range of different crop species and agricultural technologies, religions and ideologies, languages, artistic styles and epidemic diseases, also spread across Eurasia, with profound consequences for subsequent human and environmental history.