What I found most interesting...

What I found most interesting is the Silk Road, which exchanged across Eurasia. This is the main point in Ch. 7 of Commerce and Culture. The significance of the Silk Road is "the Eurasian landmass has long been home to the majority of humankind as well as to the world's most productive agriculture, largest civilizations, and the greatest concentration of pastoral peoples" (Strayer, 284). This exchanges the people and networks to trade a lot of items, such as silk and gold. The Silk Road is the most important trade routes that goods, ideas, technologies, and diseases made their way throughout the continent of Eurasia for about 2,000 years ago.

I knew that trading networks of Silk Road "prospered most when large and powerful states provided security for merchants and travelers" (Strayer, 284). This also affected the Roman and Chinese empires in the second-wave era, which "anchored long-distance commerce at the western and eastern ends of Eurasia" (Strayer, 285). This situation had happened in the seventh and eighth centuries C.E. during the time period of the Byzantine Empire. This is the clashing point, which had "created an almost continuous belt of strong states across Eurasia" (Strayer, 285), by Tang dynasty China and the Muslim Abbasid dynasty. Therefore, the trading routes of the Silk Road are really significant, even it is a long-distance trade for something that is related to merchants and travelers who trade the goods.

Overall, "various technological innovations, such as yokes, saddles, and stirrups, made the use of camels, horses, and oxen more effective means of transportation" (Strayer, 285), throughout all over the various distances of the Silk Roads.