The Silk Road was commonly known as “a merchants’ heaven and a consumers’ dream.” It was a place where culture, and religion were spread. The Silk Road was a network of trade routes connecting China and the Far East with the Middle East and Europe. It started under the Han Dynasty around the second century BC to the end of the fourteenth century AD. The Silk Road was named after silk because it was a major trade product along the route. Many other products like food, glass, and silk were also traded along the Silk Road. In the book The Silk Road: Taking the Bus to Pakistan by Bill Porter is about his journey traveling along the Silk Road. He says it was a, “cultural highway considered to be essential to the development of some of the world's …show more content…
This caused a decrease in the population thus decreasing the amount of work in China that was getting done. Many people became immune to these diseases because of their genes or illnesses they picked up along the route. A disease called the, “Behcet's disease is found almost exclusively in populations with origins along the Silk Road.” This disease is one of many that caused illnesses along the Silk Road. It caused inflammation all over the body in small blood vessels. This also caused small ulcers to appear in the mouth area. Another deathly illness was the bubonic plague (also called the Black Death). The bubonic plague caused individuals to have a very high fever, chills, fatigue, muscle aches. This was a very deadly disease during the time because of the lack of immunization to the disease and the lack of treatment, as we have today. The bubonic plague spread exponentially along the Silk Road. The bubonic plague was, “a disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis that circulates among wild rodents where they live in great numbers and density.” It spread from fleas on rats in which fleas would go around and the bacteria would enter through the skin which would cause swelling. China's population decreased because of the bubonic plague. As a result, not as many crops were grown because workers were dying of illness. This decreased the amount of products …show more content…
The prevalence of more religions impacted those who were in touch with the Silk Road. Religion spread in India, “on side routes of the Silk Road that crossed the passes to the Indus Valley and beyond, the older religion of Brahmanism had given way to Hinduism and Buddhism.” Hinduism and Buddhism spread along the Silk road and spread its religion which helped to stop it from dying out. Similarly, “The Silk Road helped in the spread of Buddhism, which saved the religion from dying out.” The people who were told about Buddhism liked the religion and helped to spread it which caused the Buddha's to become more know. Buddhism’s spread across the Silk Road not only impacted the Buddhists, but it also impacted everyone who was in touch with the religion too. Many religions had merchant caravans. For example, Buddhist monks, “go from India to Central Asia and China, preaching the new religion on the Silk Road.” They wanted to spread their religion to inform more people about it. In addition, “Arab muslims traveled to China by the Silk Road or the sea route to spread Islam.” Many monks/preachers/missionaries were sent out along the Silk Road to increase support and awareness for their specific religion. As a result, a variety of different religions were spread along the Silk
The Silk Road made sure if you didn’t trade items you can hold, then you can trade items you can cherish. Finally, in the western civilizations (Rome), it was accessed by boat. Boats could carry a ton more items and it was less of a walk for the merchants/traders. However, the Silk Road did lead a small backup path up north of Parthia. Around 27 B.C.E., the Roman Empire had only begun, but the silk road had been a thing for a very long time before that.
The Black Death (also called the "plague" or the "pestilence", the bacteria that causes it is Yersinia Pestis) was a devastating pandemic causing the death of over one-third of Europe's population in its major wave of 1348-1349. Yersinia Pestis had two major strains: the first, the Bubonic form, was carried by fleas on rodents and caused swelling of the lymph nodes, or "buboes", and lesions under the skin, with a fifty-percent mortality rate; the second, the pneumonic form, was airborne after the bacteria had mutated and caused fluids to build up in the lungs and other areas, causing suffocation and a seventy-percent mortality rate.
The disease was caused by a bacteria called Yersinia Pestis which was carried by fleas that lived on the black rats. These rodents helped spread the plague. The diseases spread one of two ways. The first was through human contact and the second was through the air, people were infected with the disease just by inhaling it. The symptoms and characteristics of the disease included fever, fatigue, muscle aches and the formation of buboes which is swollen lymph nodes. These buboes were usually found under the arm, on the neck or in the groin area. It is caused by internal bleeding which eventually forms black spots or boils under the skin (which is why it is called the black death). Death usually followed shortly after these symptoms
During the thirteenth century the plague started spreading, it spread through the trade routes of many countries. Many people only heard of the plague being in China, but little did they know that the infection was already following the routes. There were three types of the Black Death: Bubonic, Pneumonic, and Septicemic. The Bubonic strain of the plague was more common, and an infected person would have symptoms of chills, fever, vomiting, and rapid heartbeat. The person would soon develop inflamed swelling, which are called buboes.
The Black Plague is an Oriental Plague marked by inflammatory boils and tumors of the glands. Such break outs were found in no other febrile disease ( Hecker, pg 2). Inflammatory boils often appeared and black spots which indicated decomposition of the body ultimately appeared on the skin. Another symptom of the plague were imposthumes opening with a discharge of offensive matter ( Hecker, pg 5).
India and China’s geography helped them spread their religion to other areas. India’s religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, spread to other regions. The trade that was created due to each civilizations’ geography not only traded regions’ goods with one another, but their religion as well. According to World History: A Pattern of Interaction, Hinduism spread to Nepal and south to Sri Lanka and Borneo. A majority of the spread of Indian religion was due to Buddhist merchants and monks that converted people along the route of the Silk Road. China is similar to India’s religions, as the Chinese region believed in Buddhism because of the conversions of religion that had occurred
Although Siddhartha Gotama spread the religion of Buddhism in India, his teaching had a great impact on other countries. Buddhist first made their way to China via the silk route; this was a network of caravan tracts that linked China to the rest of central Asia to the Mediterranean region. Buddhist monks also made their way into China with Buddhist scriptures and Buddhist art in their possession. This is the first time that Buddhism made a substantial impact on the Chinese. Quickly many Chinese began to convert to the new religion that was brought into china.
The Silk Road got its name from the amount of silk used for trade during the Han dynasty. This route was used to travel from West to East on land they traveled to India, Persia, Arabia, and Europe, while traveling by sea they traveled through Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. These paths were used by merchants, pilgrims, monks, soldiers, nomads, and urban dwellers.... ... middle of paper ...
Sweeping through Western Europe during the fourteenth century, the Bubonic Plague wiped out nearly one third of the population and did not regard: status, age or even gender. All of this occurred as a result of a single fleabite. Bubonic Plague also known as Black Death started in Asia and traveled to Europe by ships. The Plague was thought to be spread by the dominating empire during this time, the Mongolian Empire, along the Silk Road. The Bubonic Plague was an infectious disease spread by fleas living on rats, which can be easily, be attached to traveler to be later spread to a city or region. Many factors like depopulation, decreasing trade, and huge shifts in migrations occurred during the Bubonic Plague. During Bubonic Plague there were also many different beliefs and concerns, which include fear, exploitation, religious and supernatural superstition, and a change of response from the fifteenth to eighteen century.
The Silk Road was a colossal interconnected networked generated by established trade routes that spanned the whole Eurasian continent as told by religious travelers, historians, and merchants.
The Mongols influenced the world in many great ways, one of them was their vast trade system. They relied quite heavily on trade, not only to gain resources, but also to get their inventions and objects to the Europeans and then hopefully spread from there. The Mongols enhanced the trading system by composing the “Silk Road”. The Silk Road was a path/road that the Mongols had control of and it was a trade route that many travelers and traders took. Along the Silk Road, the main resource that was traded was silk, hence the name “Silk Road.” The
It was a bubonic plague that came from Asia and spread by black rats infested with fleas. The plague spread like a wildfire because people who lived in high populated areas were living very close to each other and had no idea what was the cause of the disease or how to cure it. The signs of the “inevitable death” where blood from the nose, fever, aching and swellings big as an “apple” in the groin or under the armpits. From there the disease spread through the body in different directions and soon after it changed into black spots that appeared on the arms and thighs. Due to the lack of medical knowledge, no doctors manage to find a remedy. Furthermore a large number of people without any kind of medical experience tried to help the sick but most of them failed “...there was now a multitude both of men and of women who practiced without having received the slightest tincture of medical science - and, being in ignorance of its source, failed to apply the proper remedies…” (Boccaccio). The plague was so deadly that it was enough for a person to get infected by only touching the close of the
The disease spread through a bacteria called Yersinia Pestis. The bacteria itself can clog small blood vessels, causing them to burst. The waiting period for the plague is about one to three days, just to show symptoms, soon dead within forty-eight hours. The disease was a major depopulator. Just in Europe did it kill one-third of their population, meanwhile completely destroying two-thirds of China’s population, and decimating many Muslin towns. The disease flared and raged so quickly there wasn’t enough time to bury all the dead, so they mainly waited until the end and held a large memorial service. The disease itself was ripping apart the very fabric of society.
Economic factors have also been attributed to having caused a decline in this prominent religion at the time. Inalienable affiliation with and dependence on mercantile communities for material support were one of the major economic activities that caused the Buddhism to decline in India. Based on the evidence, a link between Buddhist monasteries and long-distance trade routes existed in India. These connections helped facilitate both its spread and sustenance, thus it was not a surprise that Buddhism appealed to merchants, bankers, trader, financiers, and artisans. There was a symbiotic relationship present between Buddhist monastic institutions and trade networks, and this was proved by the fact that the monasteries worked not only as rest-houses
The term Silk Road does not refer to a single, clearly defined road or highway, but rather denotes a network of trails and trading posts, oasis and markets scattered all across Central Asia. All along the way, branch routes led to destinations off to the side of the main route, with one especially important branch leading to northwestern India, and thus to other routes throughout the subcontinent. The Silk Road network is generally thought of as stretching from an eastern station at the old Chinese capital city of Chang'an to westward stations at Byzantium (Constantinople), Antioch, Damascus, and other Middle Eastern cities. But beyond those end points, other trade networks distributed Silk Road goods throughout the Mediterranean world and Europe, on one end, and throughout eastern Asia on the other end.