The long and arduous routes by which traders, missionaries, and others traveled between China and the ancient Middle East, so named because silk traveled to the Mediterranean along these routes. The Silk Roads stretched across northwest China, from Xi'an, into central Asia and then southward to what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, and finally westward toward the Middle East and the Mediterranean. The Silk Roads were active as early as the Han dynasty and thrived through the cosmopolitan Tang dynasty.
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