Free B2 English reading comprehension about the Silk Road. Read for meaning, answer the questions, then use the Speed Reading tool to build fluency.
The Silk Road was not a single road stretching neatly from China to Europe. It was a changing network of overland and maritime routes that connected communities across Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Europe for centuries. The name “Silk Road” is modern, but the exchanges it describes were ancient. Chinese silk was one valuable product carried westward, while horses, glassware, precious metals, spices, textiles and many other goods moved in different directions. Most merchants did not travel from one end of the network to the other. Instead, goods often passed through many hands and marketplaces before reaching distant consumers. Trade was only one part of the story. Travellers, diplomats, pilgrims and scholars also carried languages, artistic styles, technologies and religious ideas. Buddhism, for example, spread from South Asia into Central and East Asia partly through these connected routes. The network could flourish when powerful states protected trade and declined when warfare, political instability or changing economic conditions made travel more difficult. Disease also travelled along long-distance connections; historians have examined how trade networks contributed to the movement of epidemics, including plague. Maritime commerce became increasingly important over time, linking ports around the Indian Ocean and beyond. Thinking of the Silk Road as a network rather than a highway helps explain its historical significance: it connected societies without making them identical, allowing goods and ideas to be adapted as they moved from place to place.
Comprehension questions
Was the Silk Road one continuous highway?
How did goods usually travel long distances?
What religion is mentioned as spreading through these connections?
What could weaken the network?
Why is “network” a useful way to understand the Silk Road?
