trading routes
Merchant travel paths
Trading routes are established paths or networks used for commercial exchange between regions.
The term usually refers to historical overland or maritime corridors—the Silk Road, the spice routes, trans-Saharan caravan trails—along which goods, ideas, and cultures traveled.
Ancient trading routes connected East and West long before modern shipping.
- Panama CanalInteroceanic shipping route
- saltSodium chloride compound
- Suez CanalManmade strait through Egypt
- cargoTransported goods
- bazaarOpen-air merchant district
entrepôt · Silk Road · tea · trail · kola nuts · merchant · fur · sea lanes · merchant ships · frankincense · portage · spice · caravans · transshipment · dhow · market · camels · harbors
- fur tradebeaver pelts, pelts, furs, mink, sable
- nomadsnomad, nomadism, Bedouin, wanderer, roaming
- Indigenous AustraliaAboriginal art, Dreamtime, dreaming, corroboree, didgeridoo
- indigenous technologyadobe, baskets, canoes, dugouts, fish traps
- Viking explorationLeif Erikson, Erik the Red, Vinland, longships, Iceland
- Aboriginal culturessonglines, didgeridoo, boomerangs, rock art, Rainbow Serpent
trading routeslocal markets
Nearby retail establishments
local commerce · village markets · subsistence economy · domestic trade · autarky
trading routestrade barriers
Restrictions on cross-border commerce
economic isolation · blockades · embargoes · trade embargoes · closed borders