A shifting web of routes moved silk, ideas and disease between Rome and China

The Silk Road was never one single road but a changing network of overland and maritime routes linking China, Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe for roughly 1,500 years. It carried silk and spices west and glass and horses east, but also religions, papermaking technology, and eventually the Black Death. The name itself is modern — coined only in 1877 by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen.

— Valerie Hansen, The Silk Road: A New History — Oxford University Press, 2012
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