Major trade routes developed between Europe, Africa, and Asia during the medieval period, facilitating the exchange of goods like spices, silk, textiles, and porcelain. These trading networks also spread cultural and technological innovations, including paper from China, new crops from India, navigation techniques, and major world religions across vast regions of Afro-Eurasia. Regional trade and long-distance commerce thus connected distant societies and aided the diffusion of ideas, beliefs, and innovations across the Eastern Hemisphere.

1. Trade Routes and
Cultural Diffusion

3. Major Trade Patterns
• During the medieval period (1000-1500 C.E.),
several major trading routes developed in the
Eastern Hemisphere.
– These trading routes developed among Europe, Africa
and Asia!
• Remember, when you trade you don’t only pass
goods! Trade is the main route of cultural
diffusion!
– Cultural diffusion: spread of beliefs, culture, religion,
technology, ideas, etc!

4. Trade Route – Silk Road
Products - spices, silk, porcelain, tea

5. Trade Route – South China Sea
Products – Chinese goods, spices

6. Trade Route - Indian Ocean
Products – textiles

7. Trade Routes – Trans-Saharan
Products – gold, salt

8. Trade Route–Western European Sea & River
Products- European Goods
Mediterranean Sea

9. Trade Route –
Northern Europe Black-Baltic Sea
Products – furs, amber

10. Cultural Diffusion
• Regional trade networks and long-distance
trade routes in the Eastern Hemisphere aided
the diffusion and exchange of technology and
culture between Europe, Africa and Asia!

11. Goods
• Gold
– Traded along Trans-Sahara in Africa
• Spices
– Lands around Indian Ocean
• Textiles
– India, China, Middle East, later Europe (esp Britain)
• Porcelain
– China and Persia
• Amber
– Baltic region (northern Europe)

12. Technology
• Paper
– From China though the Muslim world to
Byzantium and Western Europe
• New crops (sugar cane plant)
– From India
• Waterwheels and windmills
– From Middle East
• Navigation
– Compass from China
– Lateen sail from Indian Ocean
region

13. Ideas
• Spread of religion across the hemisphere
– Hinduism and Buddhism from India to Southeast
Asia
• Buddhism continued to move to China and further into
Korea and Japan
– Islam from Middle East into West Africa, Central
Asia and Southeast Asia
• Other ideas
– Printing of books in China
– Paper money from China