“Those giant Buddhas were 60 to 90 meters (200 to 300 feet) tall,” Hiebert says. Trade, religion, communication, and political thought all interacted on the Silk Road.īuddhism, for instance, started in India and spread to Afghanistan before migrating to China, Hiebert says.īamiyan, in central Afghanistan, was a Buddhist center with towering statues that dominated local cliffs before they were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. Powerful ideas spread through the region.
It wasn’t only trade goods, however, that moved across Afghanistan. military’s Bagram Airfield) were bustling stops for traders. Settlements including Tepe Fullol, Ai Khanoum, Bamiyan, and Bagram ( current site of the U.S. The wealth and cosmopolitan culture of Afghanistan’s trading outposts made them popular sites on the Silk Road. “They not only had a lot of agriculture, they had a lot of animal wealth, because is really great for herding. “It was kind of mythical in the past, because it was very wealthy,” Hiebert says.
“It is almost equidistant between the China Sea and the Mediterranean,” Hiebert says.Īfghanistan’s central location on the Silk Road helped develop the region’s impressive wealth. Traders and travelers on the Silk Road could interact with the cultures of China, India, Persia, Arabia, eastern Africa, the Maghreb, and the eastern Mediterranean. You don’t really have to know too much about navigation.”Īfghanistan sat at a strategic juncture between the empires of Asia, eastern Africa, and southern Europe. You go up from the deserts, and you can go up through the mountains.
Because what happened is you look at the mountains, and you see these valleys that go up into the mountains. “Well, those mountains and those rivers are the best things to facilitate trade. “Why do you call it a crossroads of trade if there is a giant, massive, mountainous blob right in the middle of Afghanistan?” he asks. Fredrik Hiebert, a National Geographic Society archaeology fellow. Today, the region continues to be a crossroads for concepts of ancient and modern, East and West, geography and history.Īfghanistan is a land of rugged mountains, but its intimidating topography was actually beneficial to ancient traders, says Dr. The modern nation of Afghanistan was a major thoroughfare of the Silk Road. The Silk Road was an ancient, storied network of roads, trading posts, and oases that linked Asia and the Mediterranean basin.
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