Reflective Reading Journal: Development Of The Silk Road

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Reflective Reading Journal Entry In Question
When looking at the development of the Silk Road, there are distinctions between the settled people who engaged in agriculture and the nomads who kept animals, and overtime improved their mounted archery skills. The domestication of horses made it easier to move and the nomadic pastoralists who dwelled in the Steppe used diverse nomadic battle tactics among them the Xiongnu (Liu 3 and Qian 4). The unification of the warring Chinese faced challenges from the warring nomads like Xiongnu, and by 221 CE, the Chinese emperor sent silk textiles to appease these people. Besides the silk diplomacy, the Chinese realized there was growing value of silk in the international market (Liu 10). Through the Silk Road, international trade flourished in the Central Eurasian region as was cultural exchange.
The Silk Road is not one, but rather a network of routes going from the East to the West covering various regions of Eurasia (Foltz 4). The demand for horses among the Chinese facilitated the growth in trade where horses and other products were brought from the Western Eurasian trade routes (Liu 17). Similarly, the Roman Empire wanted Silk from the Asian region resulting in the exploration of trade, and one of challenges of evaluating information prior to the Silk Road is that some of the nomadic people did not leave records. For instance, among the Chinese the Xiongnu, refer to the archetypical steppe nomads and Qian highlighted the unique customs and they were considered barbarians by the Chinese.
Before the Central Asian region became predominately Islamic, the area was a refuge of various religious beliefs (Foltz 7). The growth of the Silk Road facilitated cultural exchange through networks that had already been established. The Silk Road was an important element of eh central Eurasian culture, where the agricultural economy, nomadic pastoral economy and the urban economy were linked (...