Assignment 2: Traveling the Silk Road

The Silk Road was the world’s first great superhighway, linking China and India to the Mediterranean world. Travel was not only across Central Asia via caravans, but also by water from the Mediterranean Sea to the South China Sea. The people traded luxury goods, as well as ideas, religions, art, culinary delicacies, and musical traditions. They also traded diseases, plants, and animals along the route. All these factors significantly affected the people and cultures that lived along the route.

You will be supplied with a map of the Silk Road by your instructor. Assume you are an ancient traveler making a journey overland to China and returning to your home in Rome by water several years later. Study the map carefully so you are familiar with the route you will take and the people you are likely to encounter.

Consider the cultural impact such a trip would have had on you as you viewed examples of art and architecture along the way.

Using your textbook and personal research, choose six specific pieces of art or architecture you would have seen along the way. Each piece must be from a different locale.

1. Download the Word document template for completing this assignment from the sidebar graphic and save it.
2. Capture pictures of each of the six locations you chose.
3. Identify each by name and location.
4. Then, discuss (in 1–2 paragraphs for each picture) the importance of the art/architecture in its native location and its impact on you as a traveler seeing it for the first time.