The Silk Roads, a universal history

One, ten, one hundred Silk Roads. The paths that over the millennia have connected communities in the known world are many more than we imagine. Rather than a single East-West trade route, the Silk Roads were made up of overlapping networks that connected communities in Asia, Africa and Europe, from Japan to Britain and from Scandinavia to Madagascar. This exhibition at the British Museum tells a very significant fragment of it, focusing on the period between 500 and 1000 AD and was created in collaboration with 29 international partners to present objects from distant cultures and worlds and highlighting the exchanges and influences that have shaped the world over the centuries. Crossing deserts, mountains, rivers and seas, the Silk Roads tell a story of connection between cultures and continents, centuries before the formation of the globalized world we know today.