the Silk Route barely existed in antiquity, at least as Richthofen had imagined it. For while goods certainly passed backwards and forwards as part of local or regional trade, with some objects eventually moving long distances, there was never, at any point in history, any one east–west overland trade route linking the China Sea with the Mediterranean. Nor was there any free movement of goods between China and the west at any point before the Mongol period in the thirteenth century.
