How have the diverse cultures of Eurasia impacted the manufacture, trade, and consumption of silk? Has silk been primarily a sign of power, corruption, or holiness? Why? Has the silk trade connected Eurasian peoples in a meaningful way or have differing attitudes towards silk and differing interpretations of silk’s importance divided as much as connected cultures?

Compose an essay response to one or more of the above questions. Your response should be at least 300 words in length. Be sure to draw upon facts from “The Silk Trade” in Trading Tastes. In particular it is important to include analysis of historical documents from the end of the chapter including, “Silk in the Roman World”, “A Chinese Buddhist Pilgrim Along the Silk Road”, The Fourteenth-century Road to China” and “Two Silken Artifacts”.

***In addition to submitting your work through BlackBoard, you are required to compose this paper on a word processor and save it to your computer.  If work is lost due to a BlackBoard glitch or other computer or internet problem I will ask you to send me your original file so that I can grade it.  Please pay attention to the file formats that BlackBoard will accept.  Note that Apple “.pages” documents cannot be opened by BlackBoard at this time.