How China's first 'silk road' slowly came to life - on the water

The overland routes carried spices and gems and other non-bulky items as well as bolts of silk and packages of unwoven silk thread

Few images are more enduring in the historical imagination than the train of two-humped Bactrian camels plodding across desert sands from west to east, or vice-versa, across the vast open spaces of Eurasia. Now that China is edging towards a modern incarnation of the “silk road” it is worth remembering how this emblem of the ancient world actually came into being.

There is no doubt that these overland trading routes existed in the early and late Middle Ages. There is also no doubt that these treks across deserts brought massively important cultural influences from the west to the