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Grade 9 · Social Studies · Unit 6 of 7

Trade Networks

Silk Road, barter and coins

What your child practises

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.

Saskatchewan Curriculum outcome: RW9.2 · trade, transportation and specialization in societies of the past

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. 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 travelled 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 travelled 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 single river used by silk boats
    • A wall built to keep traders out

  2. Question 2

    Around 550 CE, monks smuggled silkworm eggs to Constantinople, so its empire could make its own silk. Which empire was it?

    • Babylon
    • Ancient Egypt
    • the Byzantine Empire
    • the Maya

  3. Question 3

    Did trade lead to cooperation or conflict? Sort each example.

    Sort into: 🤝 cooperation · 🛡️ conflict

    • 🌱learning new crops and inventions from neighbours
    • 🚢Rome and Carthage competing for Mediterranean trade
    • 📜kingdoms agreeing on trade rules
    • 🏪merchants from many lands sharing a market
    • 🗺️rival cities going to war over a trade route
    • 🪙using shared coins and weights
    • ⚓a kingdom blocking rivals from its ports
    • 💰disputes over high tolls and taxes on goods

  4. 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
    RegionFamous goods
    Indiapepper and other spices, cotton cloth, gems
    Central Asiastrong, fast horses
    Arabiafrankincense and myrrh
    the Roman Empireglassware, gold coins, wool
    • Central Asia
    • India
    • Arabia
    • the Roman Empire

  5. Question 5

    A region has rich farmland but no metal. What does specialization and trade let it do?

    • Stop growing food completely
    • Grow extra food and trade it for metal tools
    • Make metal from wheat
    • Avoid all contact with neighbours

  6. Question 6

    Mesopotamia had plenty of clay and grain but very little…

    • soil
    • wood, stone and metal
    • water
    • sunlight

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