Download Connections Across Land:

Connections Across Land:
The Silk Roads
1. The video states that trade routes were “conduits of culture and commerce.”
What do you think this means?
2. Trade routes were not a single huge road, rather, what were they like?
3. When were the Silk Roads first in place as trade routes?
4. What occurred in the late 300s BCE that opened up trade from the East to the
Mediterranean in the West?
5. Silk was a status symbol for those in the West - - what was a similar status
symbol in Han Dynasty China?
6. What types of things did Ashoka do in Mauryan India to help traders?
The Trans-Saharan Gold Roads
7. How many square miles did the Sahara desert cover, over which Saharan traders
had to travel?
8. How many days did merchants have to travel in the desert? Between oases?
9. How did the domestication of camels influence Trans-Saharan trade?
10. How did Ghana’s empire protect trade routes during this period?
11. What religion slowly spread along Trans-Saharan trade routes?
12. What did Muslims often transmit along their routes of trade?
The Turquoise Roads
13. Which areas were connected via the trade of turquoise?
14. How were Native Americans in what is today the USA’s southwest influenced by
other cultures they came into contact with, like the Toltec?
Connections Across Water:
The Indian Ocean Maritime System
15. How did weather influence Indian Ocean trade (both goods and patterns)?
16. Describe the summer-winter monsoon patterns.
17. Indian Ocean trade was conducted primarily through what kind of political unit?
18. What zones of trade existed within the Indian Ocean Maritime system?
19. The volume of trade was so high, that what is sometimes found along the coast of
East Africa still today?