Maritime Silk Road

node · earth · Indian Ocean, South China Sea, Persian Gulf, Red Sea

The sea lanes linking southern Chinese ports such as Guangzhou and Quanzhou through Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean to the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and East Africa. Ships carried bulk that camels could not: ceramics, in particular, moved by sea in quantities the overland routes never approached. The Belitung wreck, an Arabian-built vessel lost off Indonesia in the ninth century with tens of thousands of Chinese ceramics aboard, is direct evidence of that traffic. Sea routes took an increasing share of volume from the Song period onward, and the overland corridors thinned as they did.