Ancient Coins of the Silk Road: Twenty Silver Coins Boxed Collection

The Silk Road is not a single road, but rather a network of routes extending from the Far East to Europe, including such storied cities as Alexandria, Tyre, Samarkand, Herat, and Xanadu.  One cannot overstate the impact of the Silk Road on the cultural exchange between East and West.  Trade along these routes—essentially a highway between two of the world’s largest empires (China and Rome) running through a third (Persia)—contributed to the cultural development of China, India, Persia, Arabia, north Africa, and all of Europe.  The Silk Road became more than crude caravan tracks in the second century BCE, when Zhang Qian, an emissary of the Han Dynasty, made the trek across the deserts of western China and through the Hindu Kush mountains to what is today Afghanistan.  Learning of new lands to the west, he convinced Emperor Wu to expand Chinese trade routes.  By the time Marco Polo set upon his famous journey to Asia in 1271, the Silk Road was at its peak.  Only when Vasco de Gama becam