A Silk Road Before the \"Silk Road\"

[Alanus]

That does seem about the size of it. Before and after the Han presence-protectorate along the route, shipping merchandise was a risky business, as we see in the case of Marco Polo. But the route WAS there prior to historical mention of it, risky or not, and the greater portion of it was controlled by powerful steppe tribes... going all the back to the Bronze Age when they over-saw the tin mines and sold that product to a wanting-needing customer base.
The steppe story has always been too simplified. Historians and archaeologists, especially early ones, tended to overlook the "trade picture." To them, steppe societies were bandits and opportunists, always referred to as "cattle breeding cultures." More important than cattle was horse breeding, never mentioned as an Indo-Scythic trade enterprise; or the fact that precious stones traveled a southern route from India, up through the BMC, then disseminated throughout the ancient world... including "out of the way places" like Rome.