Unit 2 Overview | World History Project AP®

What do modern pit stops and medieval caravanserai have in common? Quite a lot! Merchants who traveled the Silk Roads, Indian Ocean, and trans-Saharan routes needed safe places to stop, rest, and refuel during their journey, just like modern travelers do. In this video students will learn how in times of political stability, such as the Pax Mongolica, networks of exchange flourished, and pit stops like caravanserai flourished along trade routes. Goods, people, technology, and ideas moved along these networks of exchange, connecting Afro-Eurasian societies. But people traveling these networks also spread diseases, one of which led to the breakdown of networks in the fourteenth century.