Arguable the most important of the roads in question was the Great Silk Road – the one along which trade and cargo caravans mad been moving from East Asia (including China with its titular famous silk) to the Mediterranean and since as long as II century BC.

It is the whole length of this extended historical period that is examined by an Oxford historian Peter Frankopan in his book "The Silk Roads: A New History of the World", from the rise and fall of ancient empires to the great wars of the twentieth century. Summarizing his findings, the author clearly demonstrates that, along with commercial cargos, the international traders brought back from the East something immeasurably larger – so very larger that, up to this day, we can hardly overestimate the contribution of Asian countries to science, culture and development of the whole world.

We especially recommend you the second edition of this book, where the previous inaccuracies have been eliminated, and the academic editing done by Kirill Istomin, an ethnographer from the Scientific Center of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.