The+trade+routes

 TRADE ROUTES IN THE PAST AND NOWADAYS

Italian students discovered a very big commerce between Italy and other countries

in the past, specially with Greece.

Oil, grain,wood and salt were the main products which were traded by ancient sailors







The **Amber Road** was an ancient trade route for the transfer of amber. As one of the waterways and ancient highways, for centuries the road led from Europe to Asia and back, and from northern Africa to the Baltic Sea. An important raw material, amber was transported from the North Sea and Baltic Sea coasts overland by way of the Vistula and Dnieper rivers to Italy, Greece, the Black Sea, and Egypt thousands of years ago, and long after. In Roman times, a main route ran south from the Baltic coast in Prussia through the land of the Boii (modern Czech Republic and Slovakia) to the head of the Adriatic Sea (modern Gulf of Venice). The Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun had Baltic amber among his burial goods, and amber was sent from the North Sea to the temple of Apollo at Delphi as an offering. From the Black Sea, trade could continue to Asia along the Silk Road, another ancient trade route. The Old Prussian towns of Kaup and Truso on the Baltic were the starting points of the route to the south. In Scandinavia the amber road probably gave rise to the thriving Nordic Bronze Age culture, bringing influences from the Mediterranean Sea to the northernmost countries of Europe.

**Via Regia**, i.e. "Royal Highway", denotes a medieval historic road. The term, in the usual sense, means not just a specific road, rather a type of road. It was legally associated with the king and remained under his special protection and guarantee of public peace. There were many such roads in the Holy Roman Empire e.g. the King's road from Menzlin to Wismar in present-day Mecklenburg-Vorpommern was the "most significant East-West road in the north" of the mediæval west Slavic Lutici settlement areas. The best known Via Regia, from the Rhine river via Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig (where it intersected the Via Imperii) to Silesia, with time, came to be called //Via Regia// itself. In 2005 it was awarded the title of a European Cultural Route by the Council of Europe. It ran west-east through the centre of the Holy Roman Empire, from the Rhine at Mainz-Kastel (//Elisabethenstraße//) to Frankfurt am Main, trade city and site of the election of the King of the Romans, continuing along Hanau, the //Kaiserpfalz// at Gelnhausen, the towns of Steinau an der Straße, Neuhof, Fulda and Eisenach to Erfurt, a centre of woad production. It ran further eastwards to Eckartsberga, crossing the Saale river between Bad Kösen and Naumburg and reached Leipzig, another trade city. The eastern part continued through Upper Lusatia (//Via Regia Lusatiae Superioris//) along Großenhain, Königsbrück, Kamenz, Bautzen and Görlitz to Breslau (Wrocław) in Silesia with further connection to Kraków in Poland. The road was first mentioned as //strata regia// in a document issued by Margrave Henry III of Meissen in 1252, while its origins date back to the 8th and 9th century. After the downfall of the Imperial power in Central Germany in favour of the Saxon House of Wettin following the 1307 Battle of Lucka, the road lost its royal status; from the 14th Century this route could no longer really be spoken of as a "Via Regia".

The greek project on the trade routes of our ancestors is available in a downloadable form here: