The Silk Road — Bridge Between Worlds

The Pax Mongolica — the Mongol Peace — made it possible, for the first and perhaps only time in history, to travel safely from the Pacific coast of China to the Mediterranean coast of Europe overland. Marco Polo did it. Ibn Battuta did it. The Black Death did it, traveling the same routes in the opposite direction. The Silk Road was not a single road but a network of routes along which flowed silk, spices, horses, gold, ideas, diseases, religions, and the accumulated knowledge of every civilization along its length. The Mongols did not create the Silk Road. They made it safe enough to actually use.

These signs carry the camel caravan, the waystation fire, the silk bolt, and the road that made one world out of many.