Development along the Silk Road
This reading reinforced a statement that was made earlier in the readings; not only silk travelled along the Silk Road. Culture played a major role along the Silk route. What I found most interesting and was unaware of before, was that architecture actually made its way into Sogdiana from foreign places along the route. It was interesting to learned that the complete set up of the houses changed; instead of building outwards, they began building storeys. Houses became more spacious and were superior to the previous dwellings. Most houses were covered with murals which was really only characteristic of palaces and rich merchant homes. However, common people had murals depicting visions of gods and ritual ceremonies.
This is interesting because today, cultures can be easily influenced and changed by other cultures, however, even back then they could change everything about their ways of life, including the structure of common dwellings that were probably around for a very long time. It is understandable that we can easily change our ways today because of the technology that we have. Back then, they didn’t have construction tools and the advanced machinery that we have today; building houses would have taken a while. Painting the walls would have been a slow and intricate process and developing new ways of life to suit these changes would have been extremely difficult.
