Key Concept 2.3

Emergence of Transregional Networks of Communication and Exchange

With the organization of large-scale empires, the volume of long-distance trade increased dramatically. Much of this trade resulted from the demand for raw materials and luxury goods. Land and water routes linked many regions of the Eastern Hemisphere. The exchange of people, technology, religious and cultural beliefs, food crops, domesticated animals, and disease pathogens developed alongside the trade in goods across far-flung networks of communication and exchange. In the Americas and Oceania localized networks developed.

I. Land and water routes became the basis for transregional trade, communication, and exchange networks in the Eastern Hemisphere.

• Many factors, including the climate and location of the routes, the typical trade goods, and the ethnicity of people involved, shaped the distinctive features of a variety of trade routes.
• Eurasian Silk Roads
• Trans-Saharan caravan routes
• Indian Ocean sea lanes
• Mediterranean sea lanes

II. New technologies facilitated long-distance communication and exchange.

• New technologies permitted the use of domesticated pack animals to transport goods across longer routes.
  • Technologies
  • Yokes
  • Saddles
  • Stirrups
  • Domesticated pack animals
    • Horses
    • Oxen
  • Llames
  • Camels
• Innovations in maritime technologies, as well as advanced knowledge of the monsoon winds, stimulated exchanges along maritime routes from East Africa to East Asia.
• Lateen sail
• Dhow ships

III. Alongside the trade in goods, the exchange of people, technology, religious and cultural beliefs, food crops, domesticated animals, and disease pathogens developed across far-flung networks of communication and exchange.

• The spread of crops, including rice and cotton from South Asia to the Middle East, encouraged changes in farming and irrigation techniques.
• the qanat system
• The spread of disease pathogens diminished urban populations and contributed to the decline of some empires.
• The effects of disease on the Roman Empire
  • the effects of disease on Chinese empires
• Religious and cultural traditions were transformed as they spread.
  • Christianity
  • Hinduism
  • Buddhism