Long-Distance Trade Routes

Long-distance trade routes connected the far-flung communities of humanity, linking us like lights strung over a darkened map. Studying these trade routes using these lessons and resources will help your students understand how commodities moved from place to place. But it will also reveal the routes that moved culture, technology, and new ideas across economic networks.

Long-Distance Trade Routes

Featured Materials

World History AP®

Indian Ocean Trade Routes

From 1200 to 1450, the Indian Ocean was the center of world trade. The world’s largest empires traded in this diverse network of merchants from all over Afro-Eurasia.

A drawn depiction of two merchants, walking along a road, their backs bent from the heavy packs they are carrying.

World History Origins

Long-Distance Trade in the Americas

All societies in the Americas engaged in trade. Mesoamerica is a great place to start looking for evidence of extensive long-distance trade networks before 1500 CE.

Medieval Trade Routes Thematic Map

A full-color thematic map of Medieval Trade Routes in 1450 CE, meant to help you support, extend, and challenge the frame narratives.

Lessons

World History AP®

Networks of Exchange

c. 1200 to 1450 CE

Exchange in the Indian Ocean

Merchants crossed the Indian Ocean fueling the spread of new ideas and technologies across Afro-Eurasia.

World History AP®

Networks of Exchange

c. 1200 to 1450 CE

Cultural Consequences of Connectivity

From 1200 to 1450 CE, Afro-Eurasian exchange networks shaped culture and diffused knowledge. Contextualization skills will help you analyze and understand these cultural and intellectual changes.

Agriculture & Complex Societies

Expanding Connections

Agriculture gave societies the spark they needed to begin growing, but it’s trade that set us on the path to the modern world. Trade routes allowed goods, ideas, people, and diseases to spread like never before.

Materials

A vast and mountainous desert landscape under blue skies with large white clouds that cast dramatic shadows on the desert below. In the foreground there is a group of people on horses and other animals who have large loads of goods strapped onto them.

World History AP®

Across an Ocean of Sand: Trans-Saharan Trade Routes

From c. 1200 to 1450 CE, an extensive trading network stretched across the Sahara Desert, linking the wealthy empires of West Africa to the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean.

World History AP®

World of Chaco

A thousand years ago, the Ancestral Pueblo made Chaco Canyon the center of their cultural world. Their networks stretched across the vast Colorado Plateau.

An ancient Chinese map showing lines connecting India, Ceylon, and Africa.

World History AP®

Source Collection: Networks of Exchange c. 1200 to 1450 CE

People trekked over vast distances to acquire goods from far-off lands. But luxury goods weren’t the only things people traded; new ideas, technologies, beliefs, and diseases moved with them.

World History Origins

Graphic Biographies

Yasuke

Yasuke was an East African man who, for a brief period, became a powerful samurai in Japan during an era of intensifying exchange across the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

World History Origins

Graphic Biographies

Macuilxochitl

Macuilxochitl was a Mexica (Aztec) poetess. Her life and her poetry are evidence of the structure of the Aztec state and the networks built by the Mexica people and their neighbors prior to the Columbian Exchange.

World History Origins

Graphic Biographies

Zheng He

Zheng He was the great admiral of the Ming Dynasty. Were his expeditions peaceful trade voyages or threatening campaigns of conquest and imperialism?

St. Mark preaching to a crowd in a plaza in Alexandria

World History AP®

Trade, Technology, and Religion in Afro-Eurasia 1200–1450

As people moved between societies, they shared ideas, including belief systems and technologies, with the people they met. A look at how those people decided what to accept, reject, or mix together points us to some important changes in this era.

World History AP®

Contextualization – Mansa Musa

An incredibly wealthy ruler, Mansa Musa both shaped and was shaped by historical circumstances. In this activity, you’ll examine Mansa Musa and his world.

Mansa Musa and Islam in Africa banner featuring Muslim figures and copies of the Qur'an

World History AP®

Mansa Musa and Islam in Africa: Crash Course World History #16

Increased trade led to various states expanding over new territory. These growing states would greatly influence the powerful trade networks that crisscrossed the African continent.

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