Lsn 25 Long Distance Trade and the Silk Roads Network 丝绸之路.ppt

Disease Spread of Disease The Antonine Plague (165-180 A. D.) was a plague of either smallpox or measles brought back to the Roman Empire by troops returning from campaigns in the Near East Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was among the victims The disease broke out again nine years later and the Roman historian Dio Cassius reported it caused up to 2,000 deaths a day at Rome Total deaths have been estimated at five million Bubonic Plague During the 1330s plague erupted in southwestern China During the 1340s, Mongols, merchants, and other travelers helped to spread the disease along trade routes to points west of China It thrived in the trading cities of central Asia where domestic animals and rodents provided abundant breeding grounds for fleas and the plague bacillus By 1346 it had reached the Black Sea ports of Caffa and Tana Bubonic Plague In 1347 Italian merchants fled the plague-infected Black Sea ports and unwittingly spread the disease to the Mediterranean Basin By 1348, following trade routes, plague had sparked epidemics in most of western Europe Illustration of bubonic plague in the Toggenburg Bible (1411) Transmission of the Black Death Along Trading Routes Major Trading Region Year of First Arrival Central Asia 1338 Volga River 1345 Anatolia 1347 Lower Egypt Southern Italy Palestine 1348 Arabia Tunisia Northern Italy Iberia France England 1349 Northern Germany Alternatives to the Silk Roads The spread of the bubonic plague and the collapse of the Mongol Empire (we’ll talk more about the Mongols in Lesson 27) made overland travel on the Silk Roads more dangerous than before Muslim mariners began avoiding the overland route and bringing Asian goods to Cairo where Italian merchants purchased them for distribution in western Europe Collapse of the Mongol Empire after the death of Genghis Kahn Age of European Exploration Europeans wanted access to those Asian goods without having to go through the Mu