by
Howard
on Mon 03 Jul 2006 08:02 AM EDT
A trade route is the sequence of pathways and stopping places used for the commercial transport of cargo. Trade routes can be land or water-based.
Which route was considered preferable (or not) for use by groups of merchants and their armed and logistical escort, depended on a number of background factors, including an overall political and economic situation in areas to be crossed, travellers' mode of transport, their navigation skills and knowledge of geography (and weather patterns), as well as on the actual ease, speed, safety and profitability of such journeys.
The English archaeologist Colin Renfrew and his colleagues first demonstrated that finds of obsidian, a black volcanic glass useful for sharp cutting edges before the Bronze Age, provided a uniquely sensitive indicator of Neolithic trade routes, because the trace-elements in obsidian are usually diagnostic of individual sources [1].
The first documented long-distance networks of caravan routes and shipping routes have been established approximately 4,000 BCE between the early-urban settlements in lowland Mesopotamia (southern Iraq). The shipping routes through the Persian Gulf found their major depot in the island of Dilmun. By the time of the early Roman Empire, sea-routes through the Mediterranean and the Red Sea can be traced in detail through several examples of the point-by-point coastal description called a periplus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_routes
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