1. As early as 2000 years before the Silk Road was recorded in the literature, the route of cultural exchange between the East and the West had been opened, but not for exporting silk, but for importing Hetian jade.
2. Businessmen in Europe, Central Asia and West Asia will generally bring a lot of gold and silver, jewelry, medicines, rare birds and animals, spices, bamboo cloth and other commodities to China or sell them along the way.
3. In the sixth year of Yuanfeng (before 105), the Western Han Dynasty married King Wusun and jointly captured the Huns. At the same time, in order to break the Xiongnu's control over Dawan and obtain the excellent blood horse of Dawan, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty sent Li Guangli to attack Dawan (now Uzbekistan) many times. After paying a heavy price, he broke the capital of Dawan, greatly boosting the prestige of the Western Han Dynasty in the western regions and ensuring the traffic safety of the western regions. The "Silk Road" leading to the western regions has been unblocked.
In the Tang Dynasty, many things were introduced and transplanted between the East and the West. Medical skills, dancing, martial arts and some famous animals and plants have all increased the horizons of both sides. In the Han dynasty, things imported from the west were dubbed Hu characters, such as,, carrots and so on. In the Tang dynasty, people used to add Shanghai characters before their names, such as begonia, sea pomegranate and Haizhu (Persian Gulf pearl).
5. For the grassland Silk Road, the demand for commodity exchange originated from the division of agriculture and animal husbandry in primitive society.
The arid area of the Central Plains is dominated by agriculture, which is rich in grain, hemp, silk and handmade products, and the development of agriculture needs a lot of animal power (cattle, horses, etc.). ); The northern grassland area is dominated by animal husbandry, which is rich in livestock products such as cattle, horses, sheep and skins, wool, meat and milk, but lacks grain, textiles and handmade products.
This mutual demand and interdependence between the Central Plains region and the grassland region is the basic condition for the formation of the grassland Silk Road. Therefore, the grassland Silk Road is also called "Maopi Road" and "Tea Road" because of its characteristics.
Extended data:
The reason for the emergence of the Silk Road lies in the communication between other civilized regions in Eurasia and ancient China, the axis of East Asian civilization.
Specifically, the early civilized regions in the world include Chinese civilization in East Asia, Mesopotamia civilization in West Asia, Egyptian civilization in Africa, Indus civilization in South Asia Peninsula and Mediterranean civilization in Europe. Relevant research shows that there were only two core areas of civilization in Eurasia at the earliest: one was China, which started about 654.38+0 million years ago; The other started in Mesopotamia in western Asia at about the same time.
The core contents of these two civilizations are completely different: the cultivation of millet and rice and the domestication of pigs and dogs are the main agricultural activities in East Asia; West Asia focuses on the cultivation of wheat and barley and the domestication of yellow cattle. The earliest Silk Road was around 65,438+0,000 years, and the early agricultural culture in East Asia and West Asia spread all over the world. Therefore, Chinese civilization has a very clear origin of the Silk Road, and its starting point is the highland of human civilization.
Between the two agricultural core areas of Eurasia, there is a large area of desert oasis and grassland, which connects Chinese civilization and Mesopotamian civilization. The main view of international academic circles is that the above two cultural systems have promoted the early historical process of world civilization. Whether in Eurasia or in the history of the ancient world, the heavy figure of China's prehistory is unavoidable.
Baidu Encyclopedia-Silk Road (an ancient commercial road connecting China and the West)
People's Network-International >> Casting Silk Road in Ancient and Modern Times (Looking at Silk Road from afar)