How goods, coins, and ideas travelled the old world — from the Atlantic tin coast to the markets of Chang'an.
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The overland spine of Eurasian trade: a relay of caravans and middlemen carrying silk west from China through the desert oases of Central Asia and Persia to the Roman Levant. Few merchants travelled its whole length — goods and ideas passed hand to hand.
Chang'an → Dunhuang → Kashgar → Samarkand → Merv → Ecbatana → Ctesiphon → Antioch
The seaborne alternative to the desert road: junks and dhows carrying silk and ceramics out of southern China through the South China Sea and across the Bay of Bengal to the pepper coast of India.
Guangzhou → Barygaza → Muziris
The dense web of shipping that made the Mediterranean one market. Egyptian grain fed Rome, wine and oil moved in millions of amphorae, and the eastern silk and spice completed their journey by sea.
Alexandria → Corinth → Carthage → Rome
The caravan track up the western edge of Arabia along which frankincense and myrrh — burned by the ton on the altars of the ancient world — travelled from the trees of the south to Mediterranean temples.
Aden → Petra → Alexandria
The oldest of the north–south routes, carrying golden Baltic amber down through central Europe to the Adriatic and on to Rome, where it was prized for jewellery and thought to hold protective power.
Baltic coast → Carnuntum → Aquileia → Rome
Once Greek sailors learned the rhythm of the monsoon winds, ships could run straight across open ocean from Egypt to India and back within a year, drenching the Roman East in pepper and draining it of gold.
Berenike → Aden → Muziris
The western sea lane along which Atlantic tin — essential for bronze — and Iberian silver were carried past Carthage to the workshops and mints of Italy.
Gades (Cádiz) → Carthage → Rome
The insatiable consumer at the heart of the network. Rome drank in Egyptian grain, Chinese silk, Indian pepper, and Baltic amber, and paid in silver denarii that turned up as far away as India.
The city on the strait where Europe meets Asia, controlling the passage between the Black Sea grain lands and the Mediterranean. Later Constantinople, terminus of the silk that reached the Roman East.
Egypt's Mediterranean mouth and one of the richest ports on earth: the grain fleet's home, and the western clearing-house for pepper and incense arriving overland from the Red Sea.
The western terminus of the overland Silk Road, where caravans from Central Asia unloaded their bales of silk for onward shipment across the Mediterranean to Rome.
The rose-red Nabataean capital that controlled the northern Incense Route, levying dues on the frankincense and myrrh carried up from Arabia to Mediterranean altars.
The Parthian and later Sasanian capital on the Tigris, the great intermediary that stood between Rome and China and grew wealthy taxing the silk that passed through its markets.
A vast oasis in the Karakum, one of the largest cities of its day and an indispensable watering-place where the Silk Road's northern and southern arms rejoined before crossing into Persia.
Heart of Sogdiana and home to the Sogdian merchants who, more than anyone, carried the Silk Road's traffic — and its languages, coins, and religions — across Central Asia.
The oasis at the western edge of the Tarim Basin where the routes skirting the Taklamakan desert — north and south — met before the long haul to Central Asia.
The gateway between China proper and the Western Regions, guarding the Jade Gate pass. Its cave-temples, painted by grateful merchants, still record the traffic of faith along the road.
The Han and Tang capital where the overland Silk Road began — the source of the silk itself. Caravans set out west from its gates carrying the one commodity Rome could never make for itself.
The far western gate of the classical world, founded by Phoenicians beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Through it flowed Atlantic tin, Iberian silver, and salted fish into the Mediterranean.
The great Punic sea power, and after its fall a Roman granary port. A pivot for the western tin and metals trade and the grain fleets bound for Italy.
Straddling the isthmus between two seas, Corinth taxed the goods that crossed from the Aegean to the Adriatic — a toll-gate on the maritime spine of the Greek world.
The Adriatic emporium where the Amber Road met the sea. Here raw Baltic amber was worked into jewellery and shipped on to the markets of the Roman world.
Mother-city of the Phoenician sea-traders, famed for its purple dye wrung from murex shells — the most expensive colour in the ancient world, reserved for kings.
An Egyptian Red Sea harbour where goods from India were unloaded and carried by camel across the desert to the Nile. Excavations there have turned up Indian pepper, beads, and even inscriptions.
The 'Fortunate' port at the mouth of the Red Sea, where ships waited on the monsoon winds that carried them across open ocean to India and back — a discovery that transformed eastern trade.
The busiest port of north-western India, described in the Greek merchant's handbook the Periplus. It exchanged cotton, ivory, and spices for Roman wine, glass, and silver.
The pepper port of the Malabar coast, terminus of the direct monsoon run from Egypt. So much Roman gold flowed here for pepper that Pliny grumbled about the drain on the empire's treasury.
The great southern Chinese port and eastern anchor of the Maritime Silk Road, where ocean-going junks loaded silk and ceramics for the long voyage west through the South China Sea.
The shores where fossil resin washed up in prized golden lumps. From here amber travelled south overland to the Mediterranean, carried by intermediaries who never saw Rome.
A Roman frontier town on the Danube and a key relay on the Amber Road, where northern resin was gathered before its final leg over the Alps to the Adriatic.
An oasis grown rich as the middleman of the desert, escorting and taxing the caravans that linked the Euphrates to the Mediterranean. Its merchant aristocracy built a city of colonnades from the profits.
An old Median capital high on the Iranian plateau, a summer seat of kings and a staging post where the Silk Road climbed from Mesopotamia toward the eastern deserts.
An African kingdom that minted its own coinage and traded ivory, gold, and incense through its Red Sea port of Adulis — a rare southern power woven into the Indian Ocean network.
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