Silk Road Research Project
As the cultures of the Classical Period grew and expanded, they began to rub elbows with one another and begin to exchange multiple goods, ideas and other items. These fall into four major categories:
Agricultural products
Religion
Disease
Luxury Goods
Use the contents of Chapter 12 and the magical thing called “the interwebs” to learn more about the items in the categories above. You need to choose one item from each category above and place it on a map of your composition. (NB: This does not mean it has to be drawn!)
On the map, indicate:
- where the items were created/originated,
- where and how do they travel,
- where are they sold/distributed
- major geographic formations that may have aided or hindered the flow of goods, ideas, disease, etc.
You may have to speculate about some of this, and that’s fine. Be informed in your speculation—if you can’t find something that specifically says something went strapped to the back of a camel through the desert, it may still be a reasonable assumption to make…think about how the goods needed to be protected from the elements (if they were perishable) without modern refrigeration. How do you keep silk from getting wet on a leaky boat with no plastic? How to spices travel anyway? What about disease?
In no more than two (2) typed, double-spaced pages, discuss the impact your items had on the various societies that contacted these objects (both in terms of their export and their import). Based on your research of these objects and the impact they had was the Silk Road a positive experience for the cultures that participated in it, or was it a source of greater harm than help? Include a bibliography of sources so I know where you got this information.
You will bring in your maps and pages to hand in on Wednesday, November 17th.
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