Cross-Cultural Contact: The Silk Road

The United States is considered to be the melting pot of the modern world. People of all nationalities, faiths, and political views coexist side by side. The U.S. would hardly be the great nation it is today without input and influence from virtually every other country. Whether we are tuned into it or not, other cultures affect our day-to-day lives, from our food and fashions to religions, language, and technology. Our very political system, the foundation of our country, was borrowed from ancient powerhouses such as the Greeks and the Romans.

The U.S. certainly is not the first to strive off of cultural connections with other countries. Civilizations have been exchanging social, economic, and political concepts as well as material things, for millennia. One such civilization that has played a major role in the progress of cross-cultural contact is China. Possibly the best known means of cultural exchange was via the Silk Road. Initially this route was established for trade within China itself, however it eventually grew to span the entire Eurasian landmass. Several roads were interconnected to make up the entirety of the Silk Road, and different sections of roads were controlled and used by different groups of merchants and travelers. For 2,000 years, it served as a means for trading religious ideas, technology, diseases, and politics, among many other things.

References:
http://www.ess.uci.edu/~oliver/silk.html
http://library.thinkquest.org/13406/sr/
Robert Strayer, Ways of the World, a Brief Global History - Volume I: to 1500. pg 211-213.