ABSTRACT
This chapter examines three trading systems of the ancient world: the maritime network in the eastern Mediterranean based on Crete; the combination of sea and caravan routes called the Silk Road that connected China with Mediterranean Europe, the Middle East, and southern Asia; and the overland trade system that connected pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cities with their agricultural hinterlands and with each other. The Silk Road was not a single "road" but an interconnected network of land and water routes. Beginning about 300 b.c., India and China established trading connections by water with Greece and later with Rome. The first caravan to travel straight through to Persia left China in 106 b.c. and development of the Silk Road was rapid from that moment on. There is no doubt that trade networks like the Silk Road made possible the flourishing and spread of ancient civilizations to something approximating a global culture of the times.
