Some of the materials along the Silk Road traveled by boats, including dhows, a style of Arab sailing ship. Dhows were the goods carriers in the Persian Gulf: other ships along the coastlines and in India included everything from rafts to dugouts to keeled and planked vessels. Chinese medieval watercraft had six-layered hulls; that construction methodology reached the Arabian gulf via the Silk Road by the ninth century.
This dhow was photographed at Suez, Egypt in 1894, by William Henry Jackson. It was published as a half-tone in the magazine Harper's Weekly, and is available courtesy the US Library of Congress.
Further Information
Indruszewski, George. 2008 Ships and seafaring. Pp. 1985-1994 in Encyclopedia of Archaeology, Deborah Pearsall, editor-in-chief. London, Elsevier.
- Traveling the Silk Road, Official Exhibition webpage at the AMNH
- Along the Silk Road, background
- Old Boats, more on the history of sailing
