Trade route
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A trade route is the sequence of pathways and stopping places used for the commercial transport of cargo. Trade routes can be land or water-based.
Which route was considered preferable (or not) for use by groups of merchants and their armed and logistical escort, depended on a number of background factors, including an overall political and economic situation in areas to be crossed, travellers' mode of transport, their navigation skills and knowledge of geography (and weather patterns), as well as on the actual ease, speed, safety and profitability of such journeys.
The English archaeologist Colin Renfrew and his colleagues first demonstrated that finds of obsidian, a black volcanic glass useful for sharp cutting edges before the Bronze Age, provided a uniquely sensitive indicator of Neolithic trade routes, because the trace-elements in obsidian are usually diagnostic of individual sources [1].
The first documented long-distance networks of caravan routes and shipping routes have been established approximately 4,000 BCE between the early-urban settlements in lowland Mesopotamia (southern Iraq). The shipping routes through the Persian Gulf found their major depot in the island of Dilmun. By the time of the early Roman Empire, sea-routes through the Mediterranean and the Red Sea can be traced in detail through several examples of the point-by-point coastal description called a periplus.
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[edit] Important trade routes
- Silk and Spice Routes connected various empires across Europe and Asia, including the Roman Empire and the Han Dynasty, around the 1st century. These routes connected a number of trading posts and spanned a large part of the known world. The trade ties via land routes called the "silk road" and via sea routes known as the "spice route".
- The Silk Road is the main route from the Iranian Plateau to Western China, leading from oasis to oasis, and skirting the deserts of Central Asia, which was in use long before it was officially sanctioned. See also Ancient tea route.
- The Persian Royal Road was established by Persian kings, who set up way stations or caravanserai along the ancient Silk Road route across the Iranian Plateau.
- The Spice Route went from Arabia, Persia and India to Guangzhou in China, bypassed the Straits of Malacca.
- The Early transpeninsular routeway, part of the early Spice Route occurred on the Malay Peninsula.
- Incense Route connected the Arabian Peninsula to North Africa, Levant and Europe and were largely run by Arabian traders who supplied those regions with frankincense and myrrh from Oman and the Hadhramaut.
- The ancient King's Highway and the Via Maris which connected Egypt and Mesopotamia via the Levant.
- The Amber Road connected the North Sea and Baltic Sea coasts by way of the Vistula and Dnieper rivers to Italy, Greece, Black Sea and Egypt. The Silk Road could then be reached from the Black Sea for further transporting Baltic amber.
- The Trade Route from the Varangians to the Greeks utilised portages in Russia to cross Europe and provided an alternative navigation route from the North Sea and the Baltic to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, also reaching the Caspian Sea.
- Trans-Saharan trade routes connected West Africa and Mediterranean countries.
- The trans-Pacific trade route of the annual Manila Galleons, linking Acapulco with Manila, from the 16th to the 19th centuries.
[edit] External links
- The Logistics Institute. The International Certifying body for the P.Log. designation.
- LQ Magazine (Logistics Quarterly)
- Ciolek, T. Matthew. Old World Traditional Trade Routes (OWTRAD) Project. Canberra: www.ciolek.com - Asia Pacific Research Online, 1999-present.
- Andrew Sherratt. Trade Routes: The Growth of Global Trade. ArchAtlas, Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford, 2003.
- Sherratt, Andrew. "The obsidian trade in the Near East, 14,000 to 6500 BC" ArchAtlas, Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford, 2003.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Pelham, Reginald A. "Trade Route." Chambers's Encyclopaedia (New Revised Edition), vol 13: 735-739, Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1966.
- Stone, Norman. ed. 'The Times' Atlas of World History. Third edition. London: Times Books Ltd., 1989.
