The region that connects the East with the West was once the center of the world: where great civilizations and major religions were born and took root, where all sorts of goods were exchanged and languages, ideas, and diseases spread, where empires were won and lost. The Silk Roads were not exotic passages and meeting points, but networks that connected continents and oceans. They constituted—and still constitute—the central nervous system of the world. In the new era emerging, this region once again dominates international politics, global trade, and universal culture. As the lines of exchange mirror those that crossed Asia for millennia, the Silk Roads come to the fore once more. Drawing from an incredible range of sources (Greek, Latin, French, Italian, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Hebrew, Chinese…), the book offers a new and groundbreaking appraisal of world history from antiquity to the present day.