Marc Fennell

You've got China, Korea, Japan in the east, down through Central Asia, into India, all the way across to Turkey and Italy in the west.

And along the way, there were these massive trading cities.

So you're looking at Beijing, Baghdad, Damascus, Constantinople, all connected like a chain of commercial pit stops.

The journey itself, though, yeah, not exactly easy.

We're talking like the Gobi Desert, the mountains of Central Asia.

It's very unforgiving terrain.

And yet, despite that, stuff moved.

A lot of stuff.

Ceramics, precious metals, tea, cotton.

You have horses heading into China.

You have gunpowder heading out, which of course completely changed warfare in Europe.

And then, of course, it's not just things.

Ideas moved.

Religions moved.

But of all of the things and all of the stuff, the most precious thing traded was silk.

Don't worry.

Give them time.

But we made a big deal out of Kyrgyzstan earlier, and this is why.

Because if you are traveling east to west or west to west along the Silk Road, at some point you will hit Kyrgyzstan.

Which means, along with the ceramics and the spices and the silks moving along the Silk Road, there will be something else traveling too.