Hello and welcome to today's history lesson.

My name is Mr. Merrett and I'll be guiding you through today's lesson.

So let's get started.

Today's lesson is looking at the Silk Road, and by the end of today's lesson, we'll be able to describe how the Silk Road facilitated economic and cultural exchange across Asia.

In order to do that, we need to use some key terms, and our key terms today are trade, goods, bandit, empire, and exchanged.

Trade refers to the sale and purchase of goods.

Things that are transported to be traded are called goods.

A bandit is a robber, usually part of a band who work together to steal from travellers.

An empire is a group of territories ruled over by one person or group of people.

And when things are exchanged, it means that one is traded or swapped for another.

Today's lesson will consist of three separate learning cycles, and our first learning cycle looks at the geography of the Silk Road, so let's get going.

So the Silk Road was a network of trade routes linking China with the West.

From the second century BCE until the mid 15th century, the Silk Road transported goods and ideas from China to Europe via the Middle East, as well as providing China with goods and ideas from Europe and the regions in between.

And the map on the screen in front of you gives you a rough idea about the network of trade routes which made up the Silk Road.

The Silk Road followed one or two main routes for much of its 4,000 mile length, although there were multiple routes that branched off and led to different destinations.

The main terminus in China was Chang'an, which is now known as Xi'an.

Whereas there are a variety of starting points in the West, such as Byzantium, which is known as Istanbul, and Alexandria in the Roman Empire.

Although the Silk Road itself is very long, there are very few people that actually travelled the whole length of it by themselves.

Generally speaking, most traders would travel a short stretch of the Silk Road, exchange their goods with somebody else, who would then take it along the next stretch of the Silk Road and so on and so forth.

There were some people that travelled the whole length, but for the vast majority, it was short stretch of the Silk Road that they knew very well.

The Silk Road travelled through difficult terrain.

Much of the route passed alongside or through deserts bordered by mountains.

Travellers' journeys were broken up by oasis towns, such as Dunhuang, which you can see on the screen there, and Kashgar.

Without these water supplies, travel along the Silk Road would've been impossible.

The Silk Road also occasionally wound through mountain passes, which made the journey even more difficult and dangerous.

For people to have repeatedly travelled along such a long and dangerous route for more than 1500 years, there must have been good reason to do so.

Right, let's look at our first check for understanding for the day, which is a true or false question.

So true or false, the Silk Road trade route first began in the fifth century CE and ended in the 15th century.

Is that true or is that false? Okay, if you chose false, then congratulations, that's the correct answer.

But let's justify that statement now though.

Why is it a false statement? Is it false because the Silk Road first began in the second century BCE and ended in the 15th century? Or is it false because the Silk Road first began in the fifth century CE and ended in the 20th century? So choose your justification now.

Okay, if you chose A, then very well done, that is the correct answer.

Let's go for another check for understanding now.

So which two continents did the Silk Road pass through? Was it Asia, Europe, North America, or South America? So choose two of those answers now.

Okay, if you chose Asia and Europe, then congratulations, those are the correct answers.

Let's go for our first task of the day then.

So what I'd like to do is to complete the paragraph by using the words at the bottom to fill in the gaps.

Now, just to increase the difficulty level a little bit, there are some extra words that I've included at the bottom there, which will not fit into the paragraph, so just to add to that challenge a little bit.

So pause the video whilst you do this, and I'll see you again in just a moment.

Okay, welcome back.

Hope you got on fine with that task.

So let's go through the paragraph now.

So, "The Silk Road was a network of trade routes that linked China with the West.

Goods and ideas were exchanged in both directions.

The route was 4,000 miles long and could be dangerous, passing through mountains and deserts.

The Silk Road was active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century." So hopefully you got all of those correct answers in the gaps as well.

Let's move on now into our second learning cycle for today, which is the trade of the Silk Road.

So there is evidence that the exchange of goods and ideas between East and West was already occurring long before the Silk Road routes were fully established.

Archaeologists have found a Chinese grain called broomcorn millet dating back to about 2000 BCE in Eastern Europe, which could only have got there through trade.

Likewise, wheat made its way to China from Europe thousands of years ago as well.

However, we do not know how and why these crops were exchanged, although it's likely that groups of nomadic pastoralists from the Eurasian Steppe played a key part in their transfer.

So a realistic scenario would be that these nomadic pastoralists moved from one side of the Eurasian Steppe to the other, and they brought these grains with them.

And if they settled down for a period of weeks or months at a time, then they would plant something, and then perhaps they would harvest it and move to another place and do the exact same thing again and harvest different crops.

Now, as can be guessed from its name, a key product that was exchanged on the Silk Road was silk.

For hundreds of years, the only people who were able to extract silk from the silk worm were the Chinese, and they kept their methods a very closely guarded secrets.

As a result, the price of silk was extraordinarily high, which created a large trade imbalance with the Roman Empire, which traded vast quantities of gold for the luxury item.

So a trade imbalance means when one side is paying or trading significantly more than what the other side is, and Rome was paying a lot of gold for a relatively small amount of silk.

Eventually in the sixth century, the Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I arranged for silkworms to be smuggled out of China and into the Eastern Roman empire, thus creating a silk industry in Europe, and reducing the demand for silk along the Silk Road.

Silk though was not the only item that was traded for from China to the West along the Silk Road, however.

The Romans and other people from the Middle East also traded with China for porcelain, tea, dyes, spices, paper, medicine, and later gunpowder.

Gunpowder was invented in China in the ninth century CE, and the first recorded use of this material on a European battlefield was in 1346 at the Battle of Crecy.

In return, the Chinese gained items that they wanted from Europe and the Middle East, such as glassware, animal furs, rugs, fruits, armour, horse riding equipments, jade, and of course, gold.

The Silk Road did not travel in just one direction.

Luxury items were traded at both ends.

However, it wasn't just items that were traded on the Silk Road.

Ideas also moved between Europe and Asia.

So religious missionaries travelled the trade routes alongside traders spreading their religion as they went.

Justinian sent two Christian monks to smuggle the silkworms out of China, and while they succeeded in their primary mission, they also helped to spread Christianity to China by the seventh century CE.

Language moved freely on the trade route, as people used foreign words to describe new goods or ideas.

Other markers of culture, such as fashion, arts and architecture were also transferred along the Silk Road.

Not all trade was positive, however.

Diseases and parasites were also spread along the Silk Road.

Archaeological evidence of parasites, such as tapeworm and Chinese liver fluke have been found in dig sites on the Silk Road far, far from their natural habitats.

Perhaps the best known disease spread on the Silk Road is the Black Death, which killed up to an estimated 200 million people in Europe, Asia, and Africa during the mediaeval period.

Other dangers also confronted traders on the Silk Road.

So the journey was long and difficult, and exposure to the elements, or lack of food and water were regular killers, as were bandits who could make a living preying on poorly defended merchants travelling far from the safety of civilization.

So even though some, even though the majority of merchants would only travel a short distance along the Silk Road, a comparatively short distance on the Silk Road, those journeys that they're still making are still long and they are still dangerous.

Right, let's go for our next check for understanding now.

So true or false, goods and ideas were exchanged on the Silk Road? Okay, if you chose true, then very well done.

That is indeed a true statement.

But let's justify it now.

Why is it a true statement? Is it true because goods and ideas were moved from China to the West along the Silk Road? Or is it true because goods and ideas moved both ways on the Silk Road? So choose your justification now.

Okay, if you chose B, then very well done, that is indeed the correct answer.

Let's go for another check for understanding now.

I'd like to pick out two negative things that were features of the Silk Road, so bandits, disease, famine, or seasickness.

Choose two of those now.

Okay, if you chose bandits and disease, then very well done, those are the correct answers.

Right, let's go for our next task of today then.

I'd like you to organise the trade goods into the table based on whether they were traded from China or from the West, and the first row's been done for you.

So, see in that first column, medicine was traded from China, and that second column, animal furs were traded from the West.

So use that list of trade goods on the screen in front of you and put them into the correct column in the table.

Pause the video whilst you do this, and I'll see you again in just a moment.

Okay, welcome back.

Hope you got on okay with that task.

So let's look through and see what the correct answers are.

So we can see that the goods traded from China would've been medicine, porcelain, gun powder, dyes, paper, and spices.

And the goods traded from the West were animal furs, jade, armour, rugs, gold and glassware.

And hopefully you got all of those correct as well.

Let's move on now then to our third and final learning cycle for the day, which is the control of the Silk Road.

So the Silk Road as we know it began in China in 130 BCE.

The Han Chinese Emperor Wudi tried to make an alliance with nomadic tribes to the west to counter the threat of the Xiongnu, who were a nomadic pastoralist tribe that frequently raided China.

Instead though they found another tribe who bred superior horses to those in China at the time.

A trade deal was arranged and the first leg of the Silk Road under Chinese control was created.

Other significant trade routes, which later formed part of the Silk Road, were established at different times.

And a really, really good example would be the Persian Royal Road, which was a 1600 mile long road that was built in the fifth century BCE in what was then the Persian Empire.

And it later formed a significant part of the western most stretch of the Silk Road.

The central portion of the Silk Road was controlled by the Kushan Empire from roughly the first to the fourth century CE.

And the Kushans enabled traders on the Silk Road to travel safe from bandits within their empire.

Although various empires controlled portions of the Silk Road during different periods in its history, making them very, very rich in the process, it wasn't until the 13th century that the whole Silk Road came under the control of a single empire.

The Mongols conquered China, the Eurasian Steppe, the Middle East, and significant parts of Eastern Europe to create the largest connected empire in history.

The peace or the pax that this brought about within this territory was known as the Pax Mongolica, created perfect conditions for trade along the Silk Road.

Okay, let's go for another check for understanding now.

So I'd like you to select two empires that controlled parts of the Silk Road at various times.

So is it the Chinese, the English, the Kushan, or the Mali? So choose two of those options now.

Okay, if you chose the Chinese and the Kushan, then very well done, those are the correct answers.

Let's go for another check for understanding now.

So which empire controlled the Silk Road during the 13th and 14th centuries? Was it the Chinese, the Mongols, or the Persians? <v ->Okay, if you chose the Mongols, then very well done,</v> that's the correct answer.

Right, let's go for our next task now then.

So I'd like you to explain two benefits that the Silk Road has brought, and also one negative as well.

So pause the video now whilst you do that task, and I'll see you again in just a moment.

Okay, welcome back.

Hopefully you got along fine with that task.

Let's go through a model answer that I've got on the screen in front of us here.

So I said one benefit that the Silk Road brought was the exchange of crops between China and the West.

A greater number of different crops meant that there was more variety in people's diets, and it makes starvation less likely.

Another benefit of the Silk Road was the trade of paper from China to the West.

Paper has been essential in transmitting information to people, and without it, educating people would've been much more difficult.

One negative effect of the Silk Road was the spread of diseases, such as the Black Death.

The Black Death killed 200 million people, a figure that might have been far smaller without the Silk Road.

If you've got different points to one than me, that's absolutely fine.

As long as you've explained them and explained what is good or negative about them, that's the key aspect of this task here.

Right, let's summarise today's lesson.

So the Silk Road was a network of trade routes that connected China with the West.

Beginning in the second century BCE until the mid 15th century, the Silk Road enabled the trade of goods and ideas across the whole of Eurasia.

Parts of the Silk Road were controlled by various empires at different times.

But it wasn't until the 13th and 14th centuries that one empire, the Mongols, took control of the entire Silk Road.

Thank you very much for joining me today.

Hopefully you've enjoyed yourself.

Hopefully you've learned something, and hopefully I'll see you again next time.

Bye-bye.