Silk Roads: Peoples, Cultures, Landscapes

The Silk Roads: Economic Activity and Cultural, Political, and Technological Communication fostered economic activity and cultural, political, and technological communication across Afro-Eurasia. Edited by Susan Whitfield, with contributions from over 80 leading scholars, the book explores the raw materials, means of travel, and communities shaped by the ancient routes, with one section inscribed as a World Heritage Corridor by UNESCO in 2014.

Format: Hardback
Length: 480 pages
Publication date: 03 October 2019
Publisher: Thames & Hudson Ltd

As world powers realign their cultural, economic, and political outlooks, there is no better time to consider how Afro-Eurasias complex network of ancient trade routes, which spanned the vastness of the steppe, vertiginous mountain ranges, fertile river plains, and forbidding deserts across the continents and on to the seas beyond, fostered economic activity and cultural, political, and technological communication. From silk to slaves, fashion to music, religion to science, the movement of interaction of goods, people, and ideas was crucial to the flourishing of peoples and their cultures across this vast region.

Edited by Susan Whitfield, an established authority on the subject, with contributions from over 80 leading scholars from across the globe, Silk Roads situates the ancient routes against the landscapes that defined them, to reveal the raw materials that they produced, the means of travel that were employed to traverse them, and the communities that were shaped by them. Organized by terrain, from steppe to desert to ocean, each section includes detailed maps, a historical overview, thematic essays, and features showcasing art, buildings, and archaeological discoveries. A wealth of photographs reveals the breathtaking and often forbidding landscapes encountered by travelers and traders through the millennia.

With one section inscribed as a World Heritage Corridor by UNESCO in 2014 and others to follow, and China claiming the Silk Roads as the precursor of its Belt Road Initiative, this network of ancient trade routes and the interaction along them has never been of greater interest or importance than today. This beautiful publication honors the astonishing diversity in the way cultures advance and flourish not in spite of their differences, but because of them.

Weight: 2374g
Dimension: 291 x 229 x 39 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780500021576