so now that we've looked at religions from east to west - the direction that we've done primarily so far Buddhism and Hinduism in the East and now Judaism and Christianity in the West I'm going to look at sort of how East and West started to connect and are the authors of our textbook mr. Bentley and Ziegler are very into across cultural exchanges and connections throughout the book particularly in this chapter on this exact subject the Silk Roads and I'm quoting them here beyond their religion relations with neighboring peoples the classical societies the ones I've just mentioned and their religions abroad established a broad zone of communication and exchange throughout much of the Earth's earth's eastern hemisphere trade networks crossed the deserts of Central Asia and the breadth of the Indian Ocean long-distance trade passed through much of Eurasia and North Africa from China to the Mediterranean Basin and parts of sub-saharan Africa as well the long-distance trade profoundly influenced the experiences of peoples on the development of societies throughout the eastern hemisphere it brought wealth and access to foreign products and enabled people's to concentrate their efforts on economic activities best suited to their regions it facilitated the spread of religious traditions beyond their original homelands since merchants carry their beliefs and sometimes attracted converts in the lands they visited it also facilitated the transmission of disease pathogens traveled the trade routes alongside commercial wares and religious faiths indeed the transmissions of disease over the Silk Roads helped bring an end to the classical societies since infectious and contagious diseases sparked devastating epidemics that caused political social and economic havoc long-distance trade thus had deep political social and cultural as well as economic and commercial implications for classical societies so this series of trade routes sometimes called the Silk Road but it actually was a number of roads you can see kind of the basic outline of the major thoroughfares in the upper right there the Hellenistic kingdoms which we basically skipped in this class the three kingdoms here the Macedonian on the suicide dynasty which basically most of Iran and the Ptolemaic dynasty which is part of modern-day Egypt were the three kingdoms carved out of the conquests of Alexander the Great Alexander the Great died young after this lightning series of incredible military victories and conquests of a vast amount of territory going all the way to the doorstep of India when he died the kingdom was basically split through three of his followers and generals and then it splintered into three separate empires the suicide you can see being the biggest in terms of geographical space and so the Hellenistic kingdoms these three particularly the suicide kingdom were in some ways the pre lewd to the Silk Roads and that cultural exchange as well as economic that existed along it and in some ways you could see it's sort of the western end at least eventually of that crossroads for that Silk Roads trade Bentley again as saying historians refer to the age of Alexander and his successors as the Hellenistic age that that's confusing the hellings was a name for the Greeks with the Greeks called themselves Hellenistic is just a but what makes it more confusing is it's the Hellenistic age comes at the tail end of the Classical Age of Greece it's when Greece was kind of that the city states in or in decline which encompasses includes the conquests of Alexander the Great and as his father Philip of Macedon but this Hellenistic ages an era when Greek cultural traditions expanded their influence beyond Greece to a much larger world why because Alexander forced his way military force into these parts of the world Bentley and Z go on to say as an important part of the Seleucid Empire Bactria was in constant communication with Greece in the Mediterranean world just to pick one stop along the Silk Roads that's one of the famous ones after about 250 BCE the governors of Bactria withdrew from the Seleucid Empire and established an independent Greek kingdom some Greeks even converted to Buddhism that far away from the Greek mainland like classical taste estates in Persia China in India the Hellenistic empires brought distant lands into interaction by we have trade and cultural exchange so the the Hellenistic kingdoms and Alexander the Great's conquest which was the prelude to them was sort of the first moment where historians of world history kind of claimed that East and West sort of met together through trade and this kind of cross-cultural exchange how the Silk Roads were organized and functioned who built unplanned and organized this whole project the Silk Roads nobody they were not organized but the product of what a school of economists once called a spontaneous order which I still think the concept still holds water meaning that the Silk Roads weren't planned they kind of evolved into what they were it wasn't like a highway system that is planned like an you know in the United States as our federal highway system was in the 1950s they didn't set up maps ahead of time didn't have any way and say okay we understand this part road through here and this one there and we'll have engineers out this happened over hundreds of years of distance and traders and leaders going in one direction you know might be that the best route to go is safer more water and more food available more talents to go through some of it were logical places to go but unless it wasn't planned ahead of time it evolved and developed over time with no center of decision-making nobody planning it out there's thousands of different decisions made over hundreds of years none of them in coordination with each other and yet the system ends up working out in a sense brilliantly for people's both east and west and in between there are a lot of Spontini examples of spontaneous order in our world that I think are often aren't talked about as such that are usually incredible they're not perfect and that doesn't mean that human beings can't or shouldn't impose an element of planning on top of them to improve them or to get rid of flaws in them and I think then you certainly see that in the world but free markets and capitalism are maybe the most famous example in the modern world of what's sometimes seen as at least in part a spontaneous order nobody planned the system of say global trade it evolved and sort of developed over time Bentley again as the classical empires expanded merchants and travelers creating an extensive network and trade routes that linked much of Eurasia and North Africa individual merchants did not usually travel from one end of Eurasia to the other instead they handled long-distance trade in stages on the caravan routes between China and bactria for example Chinese and Central Asian peoples such as the Kushans dominated the trade rarely if ever did they go farther west though because the Parthian took advantage of their power in Geographic Geographic position to control Overland trade within their own boundaries once it reached Palmera the road merchandise passed mostly into the hands of Roman subjects such as Greeks Jews Armenians who were especially active in the commercial life of the Mediterranean Basin that is to say then that a product like silk could lead from China and end up you know in the Mediterranean maybe even in Rome eventually and not be taken all that distance by any one person or any one group in fact it would change hands most likely a number of times so you have this huge network of trade that you know spans this a huge distance particularly east to west and west to east and each sort of person or group or merchants is only going a certain distance before you know cashing in they're cashing out on what they have the trade and going back home it's another good example of how something not planned can be quite complex and sophisticated and yet worked as well as if it was planned again that's to be a marvel of how sort of the world sometimes works in mysterious you know and positive ways how could something just sort of spontaneous sort of work out that effectively it's a good question Overland trade routes themselves getting a little more specific though we don't really need to know this but I'm gonna do it anyway China to Roman back but again the Romans didn't go to China or vice versa although there might have been a couple of trips but uh but not not mainly through trade main road from Chang on Han Dynasty through the Tok Taklamakan desert and it sort of forked the road split into two main branches one to the north one of the south that went through kind of Oasis talents so they're trying to skirt the desert and for whatever reason ended up with a road to the north squirting the desert and one to the south branches came back together again at a place of time called kashgar basically the westernmost corner of China today then a little bit west to Bactria it says Batra on a map there but that's bacteria from there another branch that led to India while the main route continued to Iran or today Iran then the Persian Empire then joined with Rhodes on the Caspian Sea which you can see in the map there an upper right the Persian Gulf as well then to a Palmeira in modern-day Syria and from there terminated at Mediterranean ports like Antioch Tyre and others which can also see in the map the very eastern edge of the Med of the Mediterranean which is basically kind of like the coast of Palestine and southern Turkey in that area today so this is the the main overall picture laying out the trade routes as they worked out in practice sea lanes some of this was done by see professor saviano's says Roman merchants mostly Greeks and Syrians undertook such journeys and also a few settled in Indian cities as we know from Indian literary sources they brought with them glass copper tin linen and wool textiles and above all gold coins in return the Romans wanted pepper and other spices cotton textiles precious stones and most important Chinese silk brought to Indian ports via the Silk Road a few of the more adventurous Roman traders made their way further east beyond India in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE II they reached Burma Malaya Sumatra and passed on through the malacca strait to vietnam from which at last they made contact with china so the the sea lanes connecting to the you know of the Silk Roads on land that ended up at a port ended up making this trade network even bigger and more impressive and once again all the more impressive because it wasn't planned out and laid out ahead of time and put into practice they devolved trade goods on the Silk Roads stop rihanna's again this the Scythian a good example carried on a lively trade with Greece Greek cities on the north shore of the Black Sea they exchanged slaves cattle hides first fish timber wax on honey for Greek textiles wine olive oil and varnish luxury goods likewise the Chinese traded goods back and forth across Central Asia to the Black Sea and Leavitt port I've had basically the middle east or near east the Chinese exported mostly silk but they also brought a cinnamon rhubarb but high grade iron in returned they received first woolens Jade and livestock from Central Asia amber from the Baltic and from the Roman provinces glass corals pearls linen and wool textiles and above all gold I like that quotes give you a sort of a rich sort of a flavour or gives you a sense of the rich flavor of how many products are doing a to and fro the spread of religion on the Silk Road so remember merchants bring ideas and religious beliefs with them and they end up influencing other people professor Bentley the Silk Roads served as magnificent highways for merchants and their commodities but others also took advantage of the opportunities they offered to travel in relative safety over long distances merchants missionaries and other travelers carried their beliefs values and religious convictions to distant lands Buddhism Hinduism and Christianity all traveled the Silk Roads and attracted converse far from the original homelands why were these what were the Silk Roads basically safe well certainly there were you know highway bandits and robbers but all of the kingdoms who benefited from this trade kings and princes and you know otherwise had a vested interest in making the roads safe to travel as possible because it would cut into their profits if the Silk Roads went somewhere else went around them and they weren't sort of in the middle of it any longer so that's the main reason that the Bentley can say that the highways were safe Buddhism went as far away as Persia to the west and China to the east from its origin in India Hinduism went from India to Southeast Asia Christianity went to India to the east and far as Western Europe the westernmost part of Western Europe to the last so the Silk Roads weren't just about trade they end up having this indirect once again unintended consequence as well the spread of epidemic disease on the Silk Roads this of course was an unintended consequence and on it doesn't want Bentley yet again alongside the trade goods were goods were some less welcomed traveling companions infectious and contagious diseases that sparked ferocious epidemics when they found their way to previously unexposed populations what does that mean it means that part of the reason that the Silk Roads brought so many diseases and outbreaks of disease and epidemics is because some of these peoples are basically new trading with each other over such long distances especially when in the early days of the Silk Roads and so they're bringing diseases from so far away the people that are sort of getting them on the other side of the trade routes have never been exposed to the before so they don't have the immunity built up to them because they've never witnessed them before so this is the main reason that it caused a gigantic damage over time but more early than it would later on as immunities tended to build such epidemics often caused large large scale death and population decline demographic decline in turn but economic and social change trade within the Empire eventually declined and both the Chinese and Roman economies as an example contracted both economies also move towards regional self-sufficiency because of this whereas previously the Chinese and Roman states had integrated the various regions of their empires into a larger network of trade in exchange after about 200 CE E they increasingly established several smaller regional economies they concentrated on their own needs instead of the larger Imperial market so the Silk Roads did for a time a sort of decline as a major trade route as both the Chinese and Roman empires had a reason to kind of fall back onto themselves and not rely so much on longest that's not to say however since we're stopping right here that those trade routes don't become important again later on they do they do