Specialization, barter and the first coins, the Silk Road and sea routes (with a reading passage and goods table), and how trade led to both cooperation and conflict.
Maine Learning Results learning standard: Global Connections; Economics · how trade between early cultures spread goods and ideas
How we explain it
Children can open this short lesson before they practice.
Specialization: people make what they do best and trade for the rest.
In barter, find the trade rate and scale it up. Coins (first in Lydia, about 600 BCE) made trade easier.
The Silk Road moved goods, ideas, religions and diseases. Trade brought cooperation, but also fights over routes.
Example: At a market, 2 baskets of grain trade for 5 fish. How many fish do 6 baskets get? 6 baskets is 3 groups of 2. 3 × 5 fish = 15 fish. Answer: 15
Trade Networks in Maine
In the Maine Learning Results, this is unit 9 of 9 in 6th grade Social Studies, after World Beliefs.
Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.
A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.
Question 1
Which statement best describes the Silk Road, according to the passage?
The Silk Road
The Silk Road was not one road. It was a network of land and sea routes linking China with Central Asia, India, Persia, Arabia and the Mediterranean world. It grew busy after China's Han dynasty sent envoys west in the 100s BCE.
Few merchants traveled the whole way. Instead, goods passed from trader to trader and city to city, and each trader added to the price. Camel caravans crossed deserts and stopped to rest and get water at oasis towns such as Samarkand and Dunhuang.
The routes carried more than silk, spices and horses. Ideas traveled too: Buddhism spread from India into China, and art styles and inventions moved in both directions. Unfortunately, diseases also spread along the same routes.
One paved road from Rome to China
A network of many land and sea routes
A wall built to keep traders out
A single river used by silk boats
A network of many land and sea routes
Hint: Look at the first two sentences of the passage.
Question 2
Why did China keep the method of making silk a secret for centuries?
🧵
Silk was used only in temples
No one outside China wanted silk
It kept silk rare, valuable and profitable to trade
Silk was against the law to wear
It kept silk rare, valuable and profitable to trade
Hint: If only China could make silk, buyers far away had to pay high prices for it.
Question 3
Which animal carried goods across the deserts of the Silk Road?
🐫
the elephant
the llama
the camel
the reindeer
the camel
Hint: Bactrian camels, with two humps, could travel far with little water through cold and hot deserts.
Question 4
Use the table. A merchant wants to buy horses. Which region should they trade with?
Goods traded along the Silk Road and connected sea routes
Region
Famous goods
China
silk, bronze mirrors, lacquerware
Central Asia
strong, fast horses
Arabia
frankincense and myrrh
India
pepper and other spices, cotton cloth, gems
India
Arabia
Central Asia
China
Central Asia
Hint: Find the good in the 'Famous goods' column, then read across to the region.
Question 5
Did trade lead to cooperation or conflict? Sort each example.
Sort into: 🤝 cooperation · 🛡️ conflict
⚓a kingdom blocking rivals from its ports
🚢Rome and Carthage competing for Mediterranean trade
🏪merchants from many lands sharing a market
🗺️rival cities going to war over a trade route
💰disputes over high tolls and taxes on goods
🌱learning new crops and inventions from neighbors
🪙using shared coins and weights
📜kingdoms agreeing on trade rules
🤝 cooperation: merchants from many lands sharing a market, learning new crops and inventions from neighbors, using shared coins and weights, kingdoms agreeing on trade rules · 🛡️ conflict: a kingdom blocking rivals from its ports, Rome and Carthage competing for Mediterranean trade, rival cities going to war over a trade route, disputes over high tolls and taxes on goods
Hint: Cooperation is when societies work together and both gain. Conflict is when they compete or fight over routes, resources or profits.
Question 6
A region has rich farmland but no metal. What does specialization and trade let it do?
Make metal from wheat
Grow extra food and trade it for metal tools
Stop growing food completely
Avoid all contact with neighbors
Grow extra food and trade it for metal tools
Hint: Each region produces what it's good at and trades for what it lacks.