These pressures drove peasants to settle in lands they might once have scorned, in the north of Scandinavia, for example, or in parts of Ukraine and Russia on the edges of the arid Eurasian steppes. Mobilizational pressure thickened and diversified networks within Afro-Eurasia, increasing their size and the wealth and diversity of the goods and ideas they exchanged through the Silk Roads or through the maritime routes of the Indian Ocean.
