The first Silk Route traveler was Han Dynasty emissary Zhang Qian that traveled in the 2nd century BC on the mission to the West. He established political contacts with the many kingdoms of Central Asia and opened up the East-West trade route.
Only in the 1870s when the German geographer and traveler, Ferdinand von Richthofen, named the route Silk Road it was associated manly with silk. It is often remarked that he should have gone into the marketing business instead - the name was so successful that it became a real brand. It is, however, misleading, considering the fact that silk was merely one of the products exchanged along the road.

The trade routes were highways for exchanging information, knowledge - and goods. Silk was amongst them. Ideas that came across the route were the ones that transformed the culture and not the goods - Buddhist religion, Christianity and Islam that came to China; papermaking and type printing that came to the West.

The first traveler had politics in mind and he was sent to negotiate the political alliance with the people called Yuezhi, and to recruit them against the nomadic tribes called Xiongnu (Hun). He was captured on the way by the Xiongnu twice and the Yuezhi declined the alliance; he was the only among 100 from his group that returned to the Chinese court 13 years after setting out - politically, the mission failed. However, he came back with precious information about most of the places he passed through on the route.

Alexander the Great expansion into Central Asia over 2,300 years ago was stopped at the outskirts of the Chinese Empire (Chinese Turkestan), and it seems as if empires of Rome and China, developing almost simultaneously in the second century BC, had only the vaguest consciousness of each other. Silk Road became the main connection between the two empires from the Han dynasty onwards.

There was actually never one route - it was a number of roads that were changing all the time according to the actual political state of things, water supplies and weather conditions - stories about the severe sand storms that wiped out the cities within minutes still remain. The Han-dynasty Silk Road began at the capital of Chang-an (Xi'an) and ended in Rome.
The long route was divided into areas of influence both politically and economically controlled by - Parthians (present day Iran) and Sogdians (present day Uzbekistan), Indians and Kushans, Persians and Syrians, Greek and Jews and at the end of the route, the Romans. Most of the territory was the battleground between the settlers and the nomads; few people tried to cross the rout and even fewer succeeded - almost all their names are known. Death followed on the heels of every caravan.

The peak of the route was reached in the 7th century and the Tang Dynasty (618-907). By the end of the 8th century, its the heyday was over. Silk continued to play the most important role as a tributary gift and in local trade with the West.

The Silk Route on the territories of the Middle Kingdom is the history of the ups and downs of the Chinese imperial history of the relationship between the Han Chinese people and the non-Chinese ethnic groups living along the route, and that of the both Chinese and Western independent travelers that made it through the turmoil and brought back and forth precious information on distant places.