CBSE Class 10 Answered

Several silk routes have been identified by historians as linking parts of the Asian continent and further linking these places with parts of Europe and northern Africa. The land and sea routes of this kind are known to have existed since the before the Christian Era and according to historical evidence they thrived almost until the fifteenth century. Apart from silk, Chinese pottery products and Indian and Southeast Asian spices too were traded through the silk routes. In return, these regions of the orient received precious metals like gold and silver from Europe. Early Christian missionaries and later the early Muslim preachers too are known to have used the silk routes to travel to Asia. In addition, much before all this, Buddhism originated in the eastern part of India and spread in different parts of the world through intersecting points on the silk routes.