Q.2)How did food travel between continents through silk routes
Answers
Answer :
The silk routes are a good example of vibrant pre-modern trade and cultural links, between distant parts of the world. The ancient routed were called the Silk Route because along these route were mainly carries the silk cargoes from China to different parts of Asia, Europe and Northern Africa.
Chineese pottery, the Indian spices and textiles, food,etc. also travelled the same route. In return, precious metals, gold and silver flowed from Europe to Asia travelled these routes. Along these routes the Buddhist preachers, the Christian missionaries and Muslim preachers travelled far and wide. Thus silk routes proved to be a great source of trade and cultural exchanges.
FOOD TRAVELS :
Traders and travellers introduced new crops to the land they travelled. It is believed that noodles travelled west from China to become Spaghetti. Perhaps Arabs took pasta to fifth-century Sicily (an Island now in Italy). Many of our common food items such as potatoes, soya, groundnuts, maize, tomatoes chillies, sweet potatoes and many crops were introduced in Europe and Asia only after Christopher Columbus accidentally discovered the Americas. Many of our common food came from the America's original inhabitants - the red Indians or the American Indians.
Traders introduced new crops to the land wherever they went.
Sometimes the new crops made the difference between life and death. Europe's poor began to eat better and live longer with the introduction of the 'humble' potato. Ireland's poorest peasants became so dependent on potatoes that when disease destroyed the potato crop in the mid-1840s, hundreds of thousands died of starvation.