page_title: Steppe Route
section_title: Dynastic ages
hierarchical_section_title: Steppe Route / History / Dynastic ages
caption_attribution_description: Korean daggers dated to the early Iron Age.
context_page_description: The Steppe Route was an ancient overland route through the Eurasian Steppe that was an active precursor of the Silk Road. Silk and horses were traded as key commodities; secondary trade included furs, weapons, musical instruments, precious stones and jewels. This route extended for approximately 10,000 km. Trans-Eurasian trade through the Steppe Route precedes the conventional date for the origins of the Silk Road by at least two millennia.
context_section_description: By 2000 BCE the network of Steppe Routes exchanges started to transition to the Silk Road. By the middle of this millennium, the “steppe route” cultures were well established. Slow moving groups following a heavy chariot with four plain wheels led by hunters and fishermen, who practised some form of productive economy, were gradually replaced or enslaved by herdsmen from the steppes and semi-deserts. Nomads rode small horses and knew how to fight from the horseback primarily with a bow which was the distinctive weapon from the steppe and sometimes even with a sword or a saber when he was more affluent. These mobile, energetic and resourceful communities using light war-chariots with wheels having a diameter up to one meter with ten spokes each drawn by horses, spread in many different directions. This evolution strengthened an already robust system of vigorous and widespread exchanges within and sometimes beyond the Inner Eurasian steppes. And these early systems of exchange depended largely on the role of intertwined pastoralist communities. This resulted in a complex pattern of migratory movements, transformations and cultural interactions alongside the steppe route. In the 2nd millennium BCE there were major shifts of population over a wide area of Central Asia, and the whole picture of ethnocultural development changed.
  According to the writings of Roman historian Dio Cassius, Romans saw high-quality silk for the first time in 53 BCE, in the form of Parthian banners unfurled before the Roman defeat at the battle of Carrhae.
  Various artifacts, including glassware, excavated from tombs in Silla were similar to those found in the mediterranean part of the Roman Empire showing that exchange did take place between the two extremities of the Steppe road. It was estimated that the travel time for commercial goods from Constantinople (Istanbul) in Turkey to reach Gyeongju in Korea would not exceed six months. The inter-relation of China with the steppe route resulted in the brilliant progress of the Chinese civilization in the Yin (Shang 商) dynasty on the appearance of three major innovations most probably imported from the Eurasian steppe western communities : wheeled transport, the horse, and metallurgy.
  The common references which had been travelling alongside the Steppe Route can be traced from the Mediterranean to the Korean Peninsula in similar techniques, styles, cultures, and religions, and even disease patterns.
caption: Daggers, Early Iron Age (Korea)
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