[Sca-cooks] Silk Road revisited

[Betsy Marshall]

Ohh, this is gonna be fun with google earth!

-----Original Message-----
From: sca-cooks-bounces+betsy=softwareinnovation.com at ansteorra.org
[mailto:sca-cooks-bounces+betsy=softwareinnovation.com at ansteorra.org] On
Behalf Of Terry Decker
Sent: Wednesday, May 03, 2006 5:02 PM
To: Cooks within the SCA
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Silk Road revisited

Since I have a casual interest in historical commerce and economics, I was a

little nonplused to find that while there is a lot on the Silk Road, there 
does not appear to be a simple description of the sections of the road and 
their lengths.  So for fun and the benefit of the list, I've assembled a 
quick and dirty route description of the main path of the Silk Road.  One 
does need to remember that the "Road" has existed in one form or another for

5000 to 6000 years and that the primary junctions I list may or may not have

been in use at any given time.  For example, some references give Baghdad as

a major city on the Silk Road, but that city has only existed for about 1500

years.  Seleucia predates it by 1000 years.

So, for your pleasure, An Itinerary of the Great Silk Road.

Bear


The Western terminus of the main Silk Road was Antioch on the Turkish coast,

the route angled southeast across Syria and down the Euphrates to Seleucia 
(near Baghdad), about 600-700 miles.

The route then went west across Iran to Merv (approximately 1700 miles). On 
this leg of the journey, Gorgan ( at the foot of the Caspian Sea) and 
Mashhad were major stops. Water and land routes from the north fed into the 
Silk Road at Gorgan.

At Merv, a branch of the Silk Road angled southeast into Bactra (Balkh) then

over the Pamirs to rejoin the main path at Kashi. From Bactra, a feeder 
route followed the southern edge of the Himalayas through Afganistan and 
into India. The main path followed the northern edge of the Himalayas to 
Bokhara (Bukhara) approximately 400 miles. From Bokhara it was about 200 
miles to Samarqand.

>From Samarqand, it is about 800 miles to Kashi (Kashgar). About midway in 
this section, feeder routes from Tashkent enter the Silk Road heading East 
and West.

At Kashi the road splits into north and south branches around the 
Takalmakan, one of the worst deserts in the world. Both branches end in 
Dunhuang 1500 miles away. Between bandits, drought and bad weather, this was

probably the most dangerous part of the trip and the most unpredictable. At 
least six branch routes cross between the north and south routes. Hotan was 
on the southern branch.

Dunhuang to Chang'an (Xian), the Eastern terminus of the Silk Road was 
1200-1300 miles.

Straight line distance of the entire route is about 5000 miles. Actual 
travel distance is as much as 7700 miles, or about the distance of a round 
trip from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles.


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