Silk on the Road
· Silk Road: traveling across continents and through the darknet ·
Imagine you increased your weight 10.000 times in 6 weeks and then had to move your head 300.000 times to spin yourself into a cocoon with a thread that is between 700 and 1600 meters in length, made by yourself in your mouth while you’re frantically whipping your head….. such is the fate of the silkworm, Bombyx Mori. You need four of those super thin threads combined to be able to weave a silken cloth, and the labor involved of getting the thread out of the cocoon without breaking it, then washing it free of the animal glue, then putting it onto a spindle is a work of art in itself – and explains the high cost of the fabric. Silk has many qualities, warming and cooling at the same time, extremely durable, and gorgeous in its flow – no wonder it was a desired good since antiquity. Certainly it is still used from head to toe.
I was always fascinated by the history of the trans-Asian route known as the Silk Road. Long distance commercial activity can be traced back to 1000 BC to AD 1400, and with it the dissemination of world religions – however only in the direction from West to East. The Silk Road runs along the southern edge of the central Eurasian steppe, where the dry flatlands meet the mountains and runoff streams provide a reliable water supply. It acquired its name from the east to west traffic in Chinese silk, which was popular in imperial Rome. In return, merchants brought gold, silver, and wool to China. The ancient Israelites, ancestors of the Jews, also may have traded along the Silk Road. Jewish tradition holds that Israelite merchants traded with China as early as the 10th century BC, during the reign of King David, although this cannot be confirmed.
The first modern black market (or darknet market) called itself Silk Road as well, but sold all kinds of drugs instead of the woven commodity. It offered its services on the internet, guaranteeing anonymity, attracting unbelievable amounts of traffic. It was finally shut down by the FBI 2 years ago, although we do not necessarily know if there are successors. Here is a short clip on the modern day trading site trying to emulate the economic success of its historic name sake – to a bitter end. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SK6rFf0CmY
Classical picture today: women preparing silk (after Master Chang Hsuan.)