Silk Road myth

[Tribunicus Potestus]

So, the myth is that the myth is a myth?

[caldrail]

The trouble with repeating words often enough is that they lose meaning. The Silk Road as an established and formal chain of markets is known to have existed for a short period. Those marketplaces generally existed before and after the Silk Road was open for business so it was possible for goods to travel that way, albeit with less certainty of ending up at the other end.

[gilius]

Obviously anyone making such statements has never read Pliny Natural History VI, XX et. seq.

I found this online and read the chapter in question, but there was nothing there describing an overland trading route from China. Any Chinese silk would have come via India and the maritime.

 

Has anyone read the Warwick Ball article I posted on page 1 of this topic yet..? You guys believe that the Silk Road was real, but what is the evidence?

[Maty]

Obviously anyone making such statements has never read Pliny Natural History VI, XX et. seq.

I found this online and read the chapter in question, but there was nothing there describing an overland trading route from China. Any Chinese silk would have come via India and the maritime.

 

Has anyone read the Warwick Ball article I posted on page 1 of this topic yet..? You guys believe that the Silk Road was real, but what is the evidence?

 

I've been following this fascinating discussion with great interest. May I insert an oar here? You ask 'What is the evidence?' but as the one making the assumption (that silk did not travel overland)it is you who must supply the evidence. A priori, we can argue that the land route was the more practical, therefore if we are to believe it was nevertheless shipped by sea, you must tell us why.

 

Let us examine the practicalities of the matter.

 

The Chinese empire is a big place with coast and lots of harbours. But silk was mostly produced in the Chang'an district,which is deep in the western interior, near Tibet. And the easiest route from the district was not east to the coast, but west up the valley of the Wei river.

 

From there, imperial protection was available to caravans as far as the headwaters of the Ganges. The sea route involves shipping to the coast, around the Malay peninsula and across the Bay of Bengal. This was practical for pepper and spice which started in the south China Sea but is a very roundabout route for silk.

 

Once in North India our hypothetical merchant can either go south or west. Both journeys had hazards, but if India was in a political mess and the steppe stable (as when under the Alan hegemony) west was both cheaper in terms of tolls and quicker as one did not have to wait for the western monsoon windstopropel a merchantman.

 

A cargo would have to go to southern India as the Periplus 46 makes clear, the crossing to Barygaza is too dangerous. With no accessible sea crossing to northern India a Roman merchant has to sail to south India and work up the coast.

 

Alternatively once over the steppe, the Merv-Ectabana-Ctesiphon route is not only well attested, but parts of the road still exist. And the Chinese knew of the Parthians whom they called Li-jien (HHS 88)

 

In other words we can get silk to Ctesiphon a heck of a lot more easily than we can get it to Alexandria.

 

Finally, the 'surplus market' theory is flawed economics as it applies only to mass market goods. Precious items such as gold or silk keep their value from market to market because each local market has only a small pool of buyers. (Change the sponges to thimbles)

 

The silk is as good as money, and is either sold locally or traded on at the same price, or even at a premium if the demand to the west is higher than locals can afford. If anything a merchant would sell locally at a discount because for him personally the effort of moving the goods west was not worth the extra profit.

 

Anyway - that's my 2 denarius' worth.

Edited September 7, 2012 by Maty

[Melvadius]

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