The Silk Roads
The Silk Roads—the trading networks that connected Southeast Asia to Africa and Europe—spanned thousands of miles and 1,500 years. Use these lesson plans and materials to teach students the central role the Silk Roads played in creating our modern world.
Explore the lesson plans
Lesson 8.3
Commerce & Collective Learning
Trade routes such as the Silk Roads allowed goods, religions, ideas, innovations, diseases, and people to move across Afro-Eurasia.
View Lesson
Lesson 4.2
Systems Restructure
The period from c. 200 to 1500 CE was one of major transformation in Afro-Eurasia. Islam and Christianity spread, largely via the Silk Roads, and empires rose, fell, and rose again transformed.
View Lesson
Featured Materials
The First Silk Roads
Article
The First Silk Roads
Trade routes connect the vast super-continent of Afro-Eurasia.
Silk Road Simulation
Activity
Silk Road Simulation
The Silk Road connected Afro-Eurasian societies through trade. In this simulation, you’ll get to step into the shoes of a Silk Road merchant and see how goods moved.
The Silk Road
Article
The Silk Road
Heavenly horses, see-through clothing, camel-shaped gravestones. The ancient, vast, trade network we call the Silk Road connected Eurasia and north Africa. And it was about a lot more than silk.
Rebuilding the Silk Road
Video
Rebuilding the Silk Road
The Silk Road didn’t collapse after the fall of the Han Dynasty. It continued to tie together local networks and boost economic production across Asia.