The 'Myth' of the Silk Road

[Nathan Ross]

these are lap harps reaching corners of the earth by a chain of intermediaries.

Yes, but not the same lap harps! By your account, they took 1600 years or so to get from one end of the chain to another... That's not a 'trade route', it's just the slow spread of ideas and technologies between neighbours, over the course of centuries. Certainly that happened (and the neighbours clearly traded between each other) - but to imagine that some kind of 'road' or established network existed we'd need evidence of much faster and more deliberate transit of goods than that - much the sort of evidence that exists for the India route, in fact...

I see no reason the Aorsi venture did not include Chinese merchandise.

But the merchandise would have to cover a fair distance before arriving at the Aorsi... I think if I were a steppe nomad of the first century and I got my hands on a bolt of Chinese silk, my first thought wouldn't be 'Hey, you know who'd just love this? The Romans!'

Although I might consider that the nomads somewhere to the west might trade my silk for a few hundred gallons of qumys, and they might in turn trade it with the Aorsi for some horses, who might in turn... etc. But that's going to be some very shabby silk by the time it turns up in Nisibis!

Bartender: "You ought to consider shipping silk to Rome..."

Chung-Fang: "What, ship it - in a ship? By sea? Like everyone else? Great idea! Then I could stay at home in Louyang, sell my stuff to those civilised Indian merchants, and not have to hang around here in Bactrian hicksville talking to the likes of you!"