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The Silk Road: History's first "world wide web" - Shannon Harris Castelo

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    A banker in London sends the latest stock info
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    to his colleagues in Hong Kong in less than a second.
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    With a single click, a customer in New York
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    orders electronics made in Beijing,
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    transported across the ocean within days
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    by cargo plane or container ship.
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    The speed and volume at which goods and information
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    move across the world today is unprecedented in history.
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    But global exchange itself is older than we think,
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    reaching back over 2,000 years along a 5,000 mile stretch
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    known as the Silk Road.
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    The Silk Road wasn't actually a single road,
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    but a network of multiple routes
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    that gradually emerged over centuries,
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    connecting to various settlements and to each other
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    thread by thread.
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    The first agricultural civilizations were isolated places
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    in fertile river valleys,
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    their travel impeded by surrounding geography
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    and fear of the unknown.
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    But as they grew,
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    they found that the arid deserts and steps on their borders
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    were inhabited, not by the demons of folklore,
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    but nomadic tribes on horseback.
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    The Scythians, who ranged from Hungary to Mongolia,
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    had come in contact with the civilizations of
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    Greece, Egypt, India and China.
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    These encounters were often less than peaceful.
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    But even through raids and warfare,
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    as well as trade and protection of traveling merchants
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    in exchange for tariffs,
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    the nomads began to spread goods, ideas and technologies
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    between cultures with no direct contact.
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    One of the most important strands of this growing web
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    was the Persian Royal Road,
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    completed by Darius the First in the 5th century BCE.
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    Stretching nearly 2,000 miles from the Tigris River to the Aegean Sea,
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    its regular relay points allowed goods and messages
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    to travel at nearly 1/10 the time it would take a single traveler.
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    With Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia,
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    and expansion into Central Asia through capturing cities like Samarkand,
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    and establishing new ones like Alexandria Eschate,
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    the network of Greek, Egyptian, Persian and Indian culture and trade
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    extended farther east than ever before,
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    laying the foundations for a bridge between China and the West.
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    This was realized in the 2nd century BCE,
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    when an ambassador named Zhang Qian,
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    sent to negotiate with nomads in the West,
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    returned to the Han Emperor with tales of
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    sophisticated civilizations, prosperous trade
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    and exotic goods beyond the western borders.
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    Ambassadors and merchants were sent towards
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    Persia and India to trade silk and jade for horses and cotton,
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    along with armies to secure their passage.
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    Eastern and western routes gradually linked together
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    into an integrated system spanning Eurasia,
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    enabling cultural and commercial exhange
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    farther than ever before.
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    Chinese goods made their way to Rome,
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    causing an outflow of gold that led to a ban on silk,
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    while Roman glassware was highly prized in China.
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    Military expeditions in Central Asia
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    also saw encounters between Chinese and Roman soldiers.
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    Possibly even transmitting crossbow technology
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    to the Western world.
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    Demand for exotic and foreign goods
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    and the profits they brought,
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    kept the strands of the Silk Road in tact,
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    even as the Roman Empire disintegrated
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    and Chinese dynasties rose and fell.
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    Even Mongolian hoards, known for pillage and plunder,
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    actively protected the trade routes, rather than disrupting them.
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    But along with commodities, these routes also enabled
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    the movement of traditions, innovations, ideologies and languages.
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    Originating in India, Buddhism migrated to China and Japan
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    to become the dominant religion there.
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    Islam spread from the Arabian Penninsula into South Asia,
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    blending with native beliefs
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    and leading to new faiths, like Sikhism.
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    And gunpowder made its way from China to the Middle East
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    forging the futures of the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughul Empires.
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    In a way, the Silk Road's success led to its own demise
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    as new maritime technologies, like the magnetic compass,
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    found their way to Europe, making long land routes obsolete.
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    Meanwhile, the collapse of Mongol rule
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    was followed by China's withdrawal from international trade.
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    But even though the old routes and networks did not last,
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    they had changed the world forever
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    and there was no going back.
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    Europeans seeking new maritime routes
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    to the riches they knew awaited in East Asia
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    led to the Age of Exploration
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    and expansion into Africa and the Americas.
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    Today, global interconnectedness shapes our lives like never before.
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    Canadian shoppers buy t-shirts made in Bangladesh,
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    Japanese audiences watch British television shows,
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    and Tunisians use American software to launch a revolution.
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    The impact of globalization on culture and economy is indisputable.
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    But whatever its benefits and drawbacks,
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    it is far from a new phenomenon.
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    And though the mountains, deserts and oceans
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    that once separated us
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    are now circumvented through super sonic vehicles,
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    cross-continental communication cables,
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    and signals beamed through space
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    rather than caravans traveling for months,
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    none of it would have been possible
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    without the pioneering cultures
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    whose efforts created the Silk Road:
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    history's first world wide web.
Title:
The Silk Road: History's first "world wide web" - Shannon Harris Castelo
Description:

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Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TED-Ed
Duration:
05:20
  • 03:44 "forging the futures of the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughul Empires"
    There is mistake in this translation to Arabic " مزورا تاريخ الامبراطوريات العثمانية والصفوية والمغولية"
    The correct translation is " ليصنع مستقبل الامبراطوريات العثمانية والصفوية والمغولية"

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