The Silk Roads: Trade & Connection

Welcome, Trader

Long before airplanes or the internet, people across Asia, Africa, and Europe were already connected. The Silk Road was not one road. It was a huge network of trade routes that let goods, ideas, and inventions travel thousands of miles between people who never met face to face.

In this game, you will lead one region along the Silk Road network. You will trade goods with five other regions to learn a simple truth: no ancient society made everything it needed. Every region depended on its neighbors, and its neighbors' neighbors, to get the things it wanted.

Your goal is not just to win. It is to connect. You will earn points for building a wide network of trading partners and collecting many different kinds of goods, not just for hoarding your own region's specialty.

How to Play

Choose a region. Each one starts in a different place on the map with different goods to trade.
Over 6 trading seasons, propose trades with the other 5 regions. Offer goods they want in exchange for goods you want.
Each region judges your offer for itself. A trade only happens if both sides believe it is worth it, this is interdependence in action.
Earn your region's own special achievement, plus two achievements every region can earn: collecting goods from every part of the network, and completing many fair, win-win trades.
At the end, write a short reflection you can download and send to your teacher.

Why Trade Instead of Fight?

It is easy to think of history as one long story of conquest and competition. The Silk Road tells a different story too: for over a thousand years, strangers speaking different languages worked out ways to cooperate, because trading was more profitable than raiding. As you play, watch for moments when helping a trading partner get what they needed also helped you.

Choose Your Region

Each region starts with its own goods and its own achievement, based on where it sits along the network. Read each one carefully. Your location shapes your strategy.

Season 1 of 6

Click a region on the map to open trade talks. Your region is marked in gold.

🏁 The Trading Seasons Have Ended

Achievements Earned

✍️ Reflection

Answer the questions below. When you are finished, download your reflection as a Word document to send to your teacher.

Your Name

Class / Period

Teacher's Email (optional)

Date

1. Pick two regions you traded with. What did you give them, and what did you get back? Why did that trade make sense for both sides?

2. The Silk Road was not only about competition. Describe one moment in the game when cooperation, rather than competition, helped you succeed.

Vocabulary reminder: cultural diffusion is the spread of ideas or inventions from one culture to another.

3. Name one idea, technology, or invention that could have spread from one region to another along the Silk Road. Use an example from the game or from history.

4. No single region in the game could produce everything it needed. What does this tell you about how real ancient societies depended on each other?

5. Did your region's location on the map make its achievement easier or harder to earn than other regions? Explain using your region's position.

6. If you played again, what would you do differently to build a wider network of trading partners?

The email button opens your email app with your teacher's address filled in. You will still need to attach the downloaded file yourself.

🧵 The Silk Roads: Trade & Connection