Origins of the Silk Roads

Rowan Flad, John E. Hudson Professor of Archaeology, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University
Approximately 4,000 years ago, the peoples of China and Eurasia gradually began to develop networks of interaction and exchange that radically transformed the cultures of both regions. These networks eventually gave rise to the Silk Road trade routes connecting the East and West. Rowan Flad will examine the archaeological evidence-from the Qijia Culture of Northwest China-that documents the agricultural, metallurgical, and technological innovations that resulted from the earliest trans-Eurasian exchanges, and how studies of the Silk Road origins are being reinvigorated by China’s One Belt, One Road initiative.