The Silk Road and the history of natural remedies

THE SILK ROAD

The Silk Road officially opened trade between the Far East and Europe during the Han Dynasty, which ruled China from 206 BC to 220 AD. Han Emperor Wu sent an imperial envoy Zhang Qian to make contact with cultures in Central Asia in 138 BCE, and his travel reports conveyed valuable information about the people and countries that were in the West. However, the transport of goods and services on these routes dates back even further into the past. The Royal Road, which connected Susa (in present-day Iran) more than 2,000 kilometers west to Sardis (near the Mediterranean Sea in modern Turkey), was established by the Persian ruler Darius I during the Achaemenid Empire some 300 years before the opening of the Silk Road.

The Persians also expanded the Royal Road to include smaller routes that connected Mesopotamia to the Indian subcontinent, as well as North Africa via Egypt. Alexander the Great, ruler of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia, extended his rule into Persia by royal means. Parts of the road were ultimately built into the Silk Road. East-west trade routes between Greece and China began to open up during the 1st and 2nd centuries BC: the Roman Empire and the Kushan Empire (which ruled the territory in present-day northern India) also benefited from the trade created by the route along the Silk Road.

Interestingly, the ancient Greek word for China is “Seres”, which literally means “land of silk”. However, despite this obvious association with the name, the term “Silk Road” was not coined until 1877, when the German geographer and historian Ferdinand von Richthofen first used it to describe trade routes. Historians now prefer the term “Silk Roads”, which more accurately reflects the fact that there was more than one thoroughfare. Silk Road routes included a large network of strategically located trading posts, markets, and roads designed to streamline the transportation, exchange, distribution, and storage of goods. They stretched from the Greco-Roman metropolis of Antioch through the Syrian Desert and Palmyra to Ctesiphon (the capital of the Parthians) and Seleucia on the Tigris River, a Mesopotamian city in present-day Iraq. From Seleucia, routes ran east over the Zagros Mountains to the cities of Ecbatana (Iran) and Merv (Turkmenistan), from which additional routes passed to present-day Afghanistan and east to Mongolia and China.

Silk Road routes also led to ports in the Persian Gulf, where goods were then transported along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Routes from these cities are also connected to ports along the Mediterranean Sea, from which goods were shipped to cities throughout the Roman Empire and to Europe.Although the name “Silk Road” comes from the popularity of Chinese silk among merchants in the Roman Empire and elsewhere in Europe, the material was only one of the important objects of exchange between East and West. Trade in the so-called Silk Road Economic Belt included fruits and vegetables, livestock, grain, leather, tools, religious objects, works of art, precious stones and metals, and, perhaps more importantly, language, culture, religious beliefs, philosophy, and science.

The most important thing for us to say is that at that time the knowledge of this medicinal and culinary plant began to spread significantly between the continents. The amazing spices of the East quickly became popular in the West and changed the cuisine in much of Europe, as well as medical beliefs about the use of many herbs. With the flourishing of trade routes, the interest of European medicine in natural remedies coming from the Far East also grew.