Speaker: William H. Dick, MD, Scientech Club Historian
Introduced By: William Dick
Attendance: NESC: 95, Zoom: 38
Guest(s): Missy Dille, Fred Green, Randy Trowbridge
Scribe: William Dick
Editor: Carl Warner
View a recording of today’s Zoom presentation at:
Today's Program 012224
We know of the Silk Road. But where was it, exactly? And when did it begin and end? Bill Dick answered these questions and more, with many slides. There are at least two roads – northern and southern. No one usually traveled the whole road. There are many oases and many middlemen. Camels can only travel 30 miles in a day, and so there were Caravanserai or “motels” with oases along the route.
The Road began in 114 BC and ended in 1455 AD. It went from China to Rome, but much of it is in the Near East around Iran (Persia) and Afghanistan. It is about 4,000 to 5,000 miles long. As can be seen from the title, a great deal of trade was in silk from China, but many other goods were traded. The speaker gave a history of how silk is produced – it could be a talk all by itself. While silk is used mostly in clothing, it is also used in sutures, parachutes, etc. Paper was a valuable item traded on the Road, but the most important item was IDEAS. China also traded in porcelain, plants, and paper money. Much of the payment was in barter, but some was in coins – gold and silver.
Diplomatic missions were done on the Road, as was the exchange of information on religions. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Greek philosophy were discussed. Zoroastrianism preceded other religions, possibly even Judaism. It was a monotheistic religion with a messiah, concepts of heaven and hell, angels, demons, and life after death. Zoroaster was a Persian prophet in 1500 BC. Silks came from China, (and India today). Cotton, textiles, and medical texts came from Egypt. Figs are from Syria; plums, and grapes from Shiraz (Persia); the concept of zero from India, pepper from India, and spices from Indonesia. Baghdad and Samarkand were intellectual centers.
Marco Polo was an adventurer of the Silk Road. He spent 24 years in China, largely in service to the Kublai Khan. One of his duties was to deliver a Mongol princess to Persia. Polo and his family were wealthy traders from Venice. His father and uncle had been to China before, and they took Marco with them when they returned. His book, Travels of Marco Polo, was a huge success. Most of it is judged to be true.
Bill Dick is big on dates and his many talks center on dates. The key dates are 732 AD, 1066, 1492, 1497, 1776, 1825, 1883 and 1925 AD. The end of the Silk Road occurred in 1455 AD, with the Ottoman takeover of Greece. Later, to travel to the east, one had to go by water. First in 1492 with Columbus, and then in 1497 with Vasco de Gama, Portugal had begun the Age of Discovery.
Adam Smith, author in 1776 of “The Wealth of Nations”, stated that those voyages, one to the east, and the other to the west, were the two most important happenings in human history. He didn’t live long enough to be here for the discovery of DNA Double Helix and the Human Genome, or the cellphone/smartphone (judged by some experts to be the most important invention in human history).
Some of Bill Dick’s slides were taken from the Silk Road journey of Oscar Lehner and Ursula Forster.
Bill Dick
