The historical Silk Road comprised a series of land and sea trade routes that crisscrossed Eurasia from the first millennium B.C.E. through the middle of the second millennium C.E. The intersections among people from diverse cultures along the way promoted an unprecedented sharing of commodities, ideas, arts, sciences and innovations.
These maps provide an overview of the Silk Road region, which stretched from Japan to the Mediterranean, though the lenses of the historical trade routes, belief systems, languages, climates and political borders. They are available as part of Along the Silk Road, a set of comprehensive curricula for middle school and secondary students, co-developed by the Silk Road Project and the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (S.P.I.C.E.).
The Along the Silk Road curriculum is just one of the tools used in Silk Road Connect, our arts-integrated educational approach for middle-school students, designed to inspire passion-driven learning.