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  • Hi there, I’m John Green; youre watching Crash Course: World History, and today were

  • gonna talk about the Silk Road, so called because it was not a road and not made of

  • silk.

  • So this is a t-shirt. It was designed in Belgium and contains cotton from both Brazil and the

  • Texas, which was turned into cloth in China, stitched in Haiti, screen-printed in the Washington,

  • sold to me in Indiana, and now that I am too fat to wear it, it will soon make its way

  • to Cameroon or Honduras or possibly even back to Haiti.

  • Can we just pause for a moment to consider the astonishing fact that most t-shirts see

  • more of the World than most of us do

  • Mr. Green Mr. Green the t-shirt can’t see the world because they don’t have eyes

  • Look, me from the past, it’s difficult for me to isolate what I hate most about you because

  • there is so much to hate.

  • But very near the top is your relentless talent for ignoring everything that is interesting

  • and beautiful about our species in favor of pedantic sniveling in which no one loses or

  • gains anything of value.

  • I’m gonna go put on a collared shirt because were here to tackle the big picture.

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  • So the silk road didn’t begin trade, but it did radically expand its scope, and the

  • connections that were formed by mostly unknown merchants arguably changed the world more

  • than any political or religious leaders.

  • It was especially cool If you were rich, because you finally had something to spend your money

  • on other than temples. But even if you weren’t rich, the Silk Road reshaped the lives of

  • everyone living in Africa and Eurasia, as we will see today. Let’s go straight to

  • the Thought Bubble.

  • As previously mentioned, the silk road was not a road. It’s not like archaeologists

  • working in Uzbekistan have uncovered a bunch of yield signs and baby on board stickers.

  • It was an overland route where merchants carried goods for trade.

  • But it was really two routes: One that connected the Eastern Mediterranean to Central Asia

  • and one that went from Central Asia to China.

  • Further complicating things, the Silk Road involved sea routes: Many goods reached Rome

  • via the Mediterranean,

  • and goods from Central Asia found their way across the Pacific to Japan and even Java.

  • So we shouldn’t think of the Silk Road as a road but rather as a network of trade routes.

  • But just as now, the goods traveled more than the people who traded them: Very few traders

  • traversed the entire silk road: Instead, they’d move back and forth between towns, selling

  • to traders who’d take the goods further toward their destination, with everybody marking

  • up prices along the way.

  • So what’d they trade? Well silk, for starters. For millennia, silk was only produced in China.

  • It is spun from the cocoons of mulberry tree-eating worms and the process of silk making as well

  • as the techniques for raising the worms were closely guarded secrets, since the lion’s

  • share of China’s wealth came from silk production.

  • The Chinese used silk as fishing line, to buy off nomadic raiders to keep things peaceful,

  • and to write before they invented paper.

  • But as an export, silk was mostly used for clothes: Silk clothing feels light in the

  • summer and warm in the winter, and until we invented $700 pre-distressed designer jeans,

  • decking yourself out in silk was the #1 way to show people that you were wealthy.

  • Thanks, Thought Bubble. But the silk road wasn’t all about silk.

  • The Mediterranean exported such cliched goods as olives, olive oil, wine, and mustachioed

  • plumbers.

  • China exported raw materials like jade, silver, and iron.

  • India exported fine cotton textiles; the ivory that originated in East Africa made its way

  • across the Silk Road;

  • And Arabia exported incense and spices and tortoise shells. Oh, god, it’s a red one,

  • isn’t it? It’s just gonna chase me, I just--- Ow.

  • Up until now on Crash Course weve been focused on city-dwelling civilizational types,

  • but with the growth of the silk road, the nomadic people of Central Asia suddenly become

  • much more important to world history.

  • Much of Central Asia isn’t great for agriculture, but it’s difficult to conquer, unless you

  • are, wait for it- The Mongols.

  • It also lends itself fairly well to herding, and since nomads are definitionally good at

  • moving around, theyre also good at moving stuff from Point A to Point B, which makes

  • them good traders.

  • Plus all their travel made them more resistant to diseases.

  • One group of such nomads, the Yuezhi, were humiliated in battle in the 2nd century BCE

  • by their bitter rivals the Xiongnu, who turned the Yuezhi king’s skull into a drinking

  • cup, in fact.

  • And in the wake of that the Yuezhi migrated to Bactria and started the Kushan Empire in

  • what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan.

  • Although silk road trading began more than a century before the birth of Jesus, it really

  • took off in the second and third centuries CE, and the Kushan Empire became a huge hub

  • for that silk road trade.

  • By then, nomads were being eclipsed by professional merchants who travelled the silk roads, often

  • making huge profits, but those cities that had been founded by nomadic peoples became

  • hugely important.

  • They continued to grow, because most of the trade on the Silk Road was by caravan, and

  • those caravans had to stop frequently, you know, for like food and water and prostitutes.

  • These towns became fantastically wealthy: One, Palmyra, was particularly important because

  • all of the incense and silk that travelled to Rome had to go through Palmyra.

  • Silk was so popular among the Roman elite that the Roman senate repeatedly tried to

  • ban it, complaining about trade imbalances caused by the silk trade and also that silk

  • was inadequately modest.

  • To quote Seneca the Younger,

  • “I see clothes of silk, if materials that do not hide the body, nor even one's decency,

  • can be called clothes,”

  • he also said of the woman who wears silk, “her husband has no more acquaintance than

  • any outsider or foreigner with his wife's body."

  • And yet all attempts to ban silk failed, which speaks to how much, even in the ancient world,

  • wealth shaped governance.

  • And with trade, there was a way to become wealthy without being a king or lord who takes

  • part of what your citizens produce.

  • The merchant class that grew along with the Silk Road came to have a lot of political

  • clout, and in some ways that began the tension that we still see today between wealth and

  • politics. Whether it’s, you know, corporations making large donations or Vladimir Putin periodically

  • jailing billionaires.

  • Mr. Putin, I just want to state for the record that I did not mean that in any way, I was---

  • Stan wrote that joke.

  • Oh, it’s time for the Open Letter.

  • An Open Letter to Billionaires:

  • But first, let’s see what’s in the Secret Compartment today. Oh, it’s some fake silk;

  • the stuff that put real silk out of business.

  • Dear Billionaires,

  • I’ve wrapped myself in the finest of polyester so that you will take my message seriously.

  • Here at Crash Course weve done a lot of research into our demographics and our show

  • is watched primarily by Grammar Nazis, Muggle Quidditch Players, People Who Have a Test

  • Tomorrow, and Billionaires.

  • I have a message for you Billionaires: It will never be enough. Youre relentless

  • yearning is going to kill us all.

  • Best wishes, John Green

  • Speaking of billionaires, the goods that travelled on the Silk Road really only changed the lives

  • of rich people. Did the Silk Road affect the rest of us? Yes, for three reasons.Second,

  • the Silk Road didn’t just trade luxury goods. In fact, arguably the most important thing

  • traded along the Silk Road: ideas.

  • First, wider economic impact. Relatively few people could afford silk, but a lot of people

  • devoted their lives to making that silk.

  • And as the market for silk grew, more and more people chose to go into silk production

  • rather than doing something else with their lives.

  • Second, the Silk Road didn’t just trade luxury goods. In fact, arguably the most important

  • thing traded along the Silk Road: ideas.

  • For example, the Silk Road was the primary route for the spread of Buddhism.When we last

  • saw the Buddha’s Eight-Fold Path to escaping the cycle of suffering and desire that's inherent

  • to humans, it was beginning to dwindle in India.

  • But through contacts with other cultures and traditions, Buddhism grew and flourished and

  • became one of the great religious traditions of the world.

  • The variation of Buddhism that took root in China, Korea, Japan, and Central Asia is known

  • as Mahayana Buddhism, and it differed from the original teachings of the Buddha in many

  • ways, but one that was fundamental. For Mahayana Buddhists, the Buddha was divine. (I mean,

  • we canand religious historians dofight over the exact definition of divine, but in

  • Mahayanna Buddhism, there’s no question that the Buddha is venerated to a greater

  • degree.

  • The idea of Nirvana also transformed from a release from that cycle of suffering and

  • desire to something much more heavenly and frankly more fun, and in some versions of

  • Mahayana Buddhism, there are lots of different heavens, each more awesome than the last.

  • Rather than focusing on the fundamental fact of suffering, Mahayana Buddhism offered the

  • hope that through worship of the Buddha, or one of the many bodhisattvasholy people

  • who could have achieved nirvana but chose to hang out on Earth with us because theyre

  • super niceone could attain a good afterlife.

  • Many merchants on the silk road became strong supporters of monasteries which in turn became

  • convenient weigh stations for caravans.

  • And by endowing the monasteries, rich merchants were buying a form of supernatural insurance;

  • Monks who lived in the monasteries would pray for the success of trade missions and the

  • health of their patrons. It was win-win, especially when you consider that one of the central

  • materials used in Mahayana Buddhist rituals issilk.

  • And a third reason the silk road changed all our lives, worldwide interconnectedness of

  • populations led to the spread of disease.

  • Measles and Smallpox traveled along it, as did bubonic plague, which came from the East

  • to the West in 534, 750, andmost devastatinglyin 1346.

  • This last plagueknown as the Black Deathresulted in the largest population decimation in human

  • history, with nearly half of Europeans dying in a four-year period.

  • A sizable majority of people living in Italy died as did two-thirds of Londoners.

  • And it quite possibly wouldn’t have happened without the Silk Road. If you were living

  • in London during the fourteenth century, you probably didn’t blame the Silk Road for

  • your community’s devastation, but it played a role.

  • If you look at it that way, the interconnectedness fostered by Silk Road affected way, way more

  • people than just those rich enough to buy silk, just as today’s globalization offers

  • both promise and threat to each of us.

  • Next week well talk about Julius Caesar and in what situation, if any, it’s okay

  • to stab your friend in the gut. Until then, thanks for watching.