Presentation: The Silk Road

Globalization in the Ancient World (Asian Art Museum Speaker Series)

Travel the ancient routes that provided goods, technologies, and ideas to countries and cultures from the Mediterranean to the Pacific. Discover the transformations that resulted from the complex exchanges between East and West.

Before jet planes and smartphones, militia, merchants, monks and pilgrims spent months, even years, traveling over perilous land routes to carry luxury goods and new ideas thousands of miles across lost civilizations. Luxury commodities such as silk, porcelain, paper, tea, jade, amber, spices, ivory, gunpowder, gold and silver were carried across overland and sea trade routes known as the Silk Road. Religions and ideas, technologies and innovations also spread along these trade routes in all directions.

History’s greats such as Alexander the Great, Marco Polo, Zhang Qian, and Genghis Khan, all left their traces on the greatest roads humankind has ever known. Come discover the complexity of the exchanges and variety of cultures transformed as a result of goods, knowledge and techniques transmitted between East and West in this slide show and lecture by an Asian Art Museum docent.

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Learning Center, 5th Floor, Main Library

12:00pm - 1:00pm