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The silk trade
Silkproduction began in northern China
more than 4,500 years ago. For 2,000 years
the process was guarded secret.
a closely
Silk threads come from cocoon - a coat
a
which the silkworm spins around itself for
protection while it grows into a moth. To
make silk fabric, workers unwind the
fine threads from the cocoon, twist them
together into longer threads and weave them
on a loom. Silk is valuable because it makes
very strong, beautiful cloth, and because
more than 2,500 cocoons must be unwound
by hand to make just 20 oz of yarn.

The Road
Silk
Merchants leading rows of heavily laden,
i
snorting camels (left) brought silk to the
Middle East and Europe along the Silk
Road. This ancient road was actually
several different routes that skirted the
deserts and mountains on the way
through India and central .Asia Western
traders explored the route as early as the
1st century a.d. In the 2nd century the
geographer Ptolemy described a stone
tower in the Pamir Mountains where
traders met to barter The traders and
their animals traveled in
groups called
Jade and porcelain caravans. They rested and refreshed
Western traders carrying gold along the Silk Road themselves along the route at a series
often returned with porcelain and carvings made of caravanserais, or inns (abo
of jade - a hard green gemstone Beautiful jade
carvings, such as the horse (left) fetched high
prices even in China, where for many centuries
jade was the most precious substance known
The Chinese invented porcelain, a delicate,
semitransparent pottery, in the 8th century
People paid high pnces for Chinese
porcelain in fashionable European cities

The spice trade

When ihe Queen of Sheba visited King Solomon, the Bible
reports thai she took twenty talents of gold, and of spi
very great -tore, and preciou- Thousands ol years ago
people ol the Middle East valued spices as highly as gold In
Europe, spices were vital for flavoring meat that had been

preserved in salt lor months Most spices used grew wild in

the Far East, but even in biblical times they were cultivate
.lop- foi sale Pepper became so precious that at times it was
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as money in the West as well as the East Some people
had to pay their taxes with peppercorns

ut meg
Nutmegs .ire the kernel
ol a I run that grows in
Cloves
the Spice Island
The unor
southeast Asia The
buds ol am
Dutch monopolized trade
tree (left) pre
m this valuable spice (left)
cloves The tree
when they gained control ol
once grew all over
the islands from the Portuguese
the East Indie*
Spice routes in the 1 7th century Cinnamon
to make the -

Spices reached the West by a number ol different routes Ihe At one time
more costly the
queen of Sheba's spices probably went by Chinese junk (above) Pepper cinnamon (left)
Dutch uprcx
from Southeast Asia, via the Bay ol Bengal, and then In Arab Peppercorns grow was more valuable
clo
dhow across the Arabian Sea to be landed on the ladhramaui I wild on a vine in the than gold This
coast of what is now Yemen, in the Arabian Peninsula. From monsoon forests ol made the Dutch
there traders took the precious cargo overland, Othei sea India's southwest spice merchants
routes continued up
the Red Sea to Alexandria, or hugged coast, these and a rich It is made
tin ending at loimUZ at the mouth ol the
coast of India, I related plant were from the hark ol the
Persian Gulf. All this changed m ihe Final years of the farmed all over cinnamon tree that
15th century, when the Portugui se found a sea route southern Asia more grows in Sri Lanka
from Europe around Africa to tin- spue Islands. than 2.000 yeai and other placi

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