Practice question · Multiple choice
Why was Rome’s knowledge of China so poor despite the silk trade?
Hints
- How many hands did a bolt of silk pass through?
- What degrades across relays, and what does not?
Show the answer
B. Information does not survive twenty relays even when silk does
Why
A bolt of silk reaching Rome had been traded twenty times, and the object survived the journey intact while the knowledge did not. The goods arrived; the information dissolved on the way.
Practise Economic Geography and Trade Routes
The app has 4 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History I is free to start.
More questions on Economic Geography and Trade Routes
- Containerisation meant value density stopped governing what could be shipped. Why did that change WHERE…
- "Bulk goods do not travel far" is a permanent law of economic geography.
- Why is grain the instructive case?
- Goods travelled the length of the Silk Road but individual merchants generally did not. What does that…
- Roman grain moved thousands of kilometres by sea and a fraction of that distance by land cost more. What…
- Sort each consequence of the relay structure.
- Why did containerisation transform shipping costs when the ocean crossing itself was already cheap?