Chapter 7 Notes
AP World History
I. The Silk Road
 A. Origins and Operations
 1. Overland route that linked China to
the Mediterranean world.
 2. Trade was fostered by the Chinese
need for horses and by the Parthian
state in northeastern Iran and its control
of the markets in Mesopotamia.
 3. China also imported alfalfa, grapes
and other products and exported silk,
pottery, and paper.
 B. The Sasanid Empire 224-600 C.E.
 1. Controlled areas of Iran and Mesopotamia.
 2. Came into contact with the Byzantine empire and
this alternated between war and peaceful trading
relationships.
 3. Silk road brought new products to the empire.
 4. Zoroastrianism became the official religion while
Christianity became the official religion of the
Byzantine empire.
 5. Sasanids and Byzantines went to war because
they persecuted the others in their territories.
 6. Mani of Mesopotamia founded known as
Manichaeism which centered around the struggle
between good and evil.
 7. Mani was killed by a Sasanid Shah.
 8. During this period, religion had replaced
citizenship, language, and ethnicity as the paramount
factor in people’s identity.
 C. The Impact of the Silk Road
 1. Turkic nomads in Central Asia
benefited from the trade and became
interested in the religions of Christianity,
Manicheanism, Zoroastrianism,
Buddhism, and Islam.
 2. Central Asian military technologies,
particularly the stirrup, were exported
both east and west, with significant
consequences for the conduct of war.
II. The Indian Ocean Maritime
System
 A. Origins of Contact and Trade
 1. There is evidence of early trade
between ancient Mesopotamia and the
Indus Valley but this trade appears to
have been broken off because
Mesopotamia turned toward trade with
East Africa.
 2. 2000 years ago, Malay sailors from
Southeast Asia migrated to the islands of
Madagasscar.
 B. The Impact of Indian Ocean Trade
 1. The Greco-Egyptian text, The Periplus of the
Erythean Sea accounts a trading system must
have been established and was flourishing when
the account was written.
 2. The culture of the Indian Ocean ports were
often isolated from that of their hinterlands.
 3. Traders and sailors in the Indian Ocean
system often married local women in the ports
that they frequented and these women became
mediators between cultures.
III. Routes Across the Sahara
 A. Early Saharan Cultures
 1. Early rock painting indicate an early hunting
culture that was joined by cattle breeders.
 2. Later succeeded by horse traders and
charioteers who might have been Minoan or
Mycenaean refugees.
 3. Camel riders followed the charioteers and is
probably related to the development of the
trans-Saharan trade.
 4. The camel made it possible for people from
the Southern highlands of the Sahara to roam
the desert and to establish contacts with the
people of northern Sahara.

B. Trade Across the Sahara
 1. Two local trading systems were linked.
 2. Traders in the south had access to desert salt deposits
and exported salt in return for kola nuts and palm oil.
 3. Traders in the north exported agricultural products and
wild animals.
 4. Arabs invaded North Africa during the mid 7th century
c.e. and trade of Algeria and Morocco was cut off.
 5. The Berber people of these areas revolted against the
Arabs in the 700s and established independent city-states,
including Sijilmasa and Tahert.
 6. Berbers began to trade copper and manufactured
goods to the nomads of the Southern desert in return for
gold.
IV. Sub-Saharan Africa
 A. Challenging Geography
 1. Large area with many different
geographical zones and obstacles to
movement.
 2. Areas include the Sahel, tropical
savanna, tropical rain forest of lower
Niger and Zaire, savanna area south of
rainforest, steppe, desert, and temperate
highlands of South Africa.
 B. Development of Cultural Unity
 1. No great tradition developed.
 2. Sub Saharan Africa is a vast territory of
many small traditions.
 3. An estimated two thousand languages
spoken on the continent.
 4. No foreign power ever conquered Africa and
imposed a unified great tradition.
 5. People were broken up by the different
geological obstacles.
 C. African Cultural Characteristics
 1. Despite diversity there are common African
cultural elements called Africanity.
 2. Concept of kingship.
 3. Cultivation with the hoe and digging stick,
use of rhythm in African music, and the
functions of the dancing and mask wearing in
rituals.
 4. One reason for this unity is that the people of
Sub-Saharan Africa are descended from the
people who occupied the southern Sahara during
its wet period and migrated south to the Sahel.
 D. The Advent of Iron and the Bantu
Migrations
 1. The spread of iron and other technology in
Sub-Saharan Africa is the result of the
phenomenon known as the Bantu Migrations.
 2. Bantu speaking people were originally from
the area on the border of modern day Nigeria
and Cameroon, but spread out toward the east
and the south through a series of migrations.
V. Spread of Ideas
 A. Ideas and Material Evidence
 1. Hard to say why ideas spread in
preliterate societies.
 2. Why is eating pig restricted and
prohibited by religious belief in
Southeast Asia, ancient Egypt, and in
eastern Iran.
 3. Was the spread of coins a result of
their invention in Anatolia?
 B. The Spread of Buddhism
 1. Spread of Buddhism was facilitated both by
royal sponsorship and by the travels of ordinary
pilgrims and missionaries.
 2. Mauryan King Ashoka and King Kanishka of
the Kushans.
 3. Chinese monks Faxian and Xuanzang
transmitted Buddhism to China.
 4. Buddhist missionaries from India brought
Buddhism to the Middle East and Southeast
Asia.
 C. Spread of Christianity
 1. Mediterranean states spread
Christianity to Armenia which was on the
Silk road and this spread Christianity to
other parts of the world.
 2. Christianity spreading to Ethiopia was
similiarly linked to a Mediterranean
Christian attempt to deprive Iran of
trade.