Ortelius. A research atlas of thematic cartography
EST. MMXXVI PRIME MERIDIAN 0°00′00″  ·  EQUATOR 0°00′00″  ·  PROJECTION: ORTHOGRAPHIC 22 STUDIES INDEXED
Historical ·Medieval ·Transregional ·Eurasia

Caravan Legs of the Medieval Silk Road

Principal caravan legs of the medieval Silk Road, by route, drawn as arcs.

14 records c. 800–1200 CE 37.13° N · 63.75° E
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Fig. 1 Interactive distribution of the 14 geolocated records on a live carto-positron base · globe / flat projection · decimal degrees (WGS 84).
Abstract

The principal overland legs of the medieval Silk Road, rendered as arcs between staging cities and grouped into the northern, western and southern corridors. Arc width encodes a nominal traffic volume. The compilation is illustrative — a simplified skeleton of the route system — not a transport record.

Record
ThemeHistorical — religious & historical geography
RegionEurasia
Temporal rangec. 800–1200 CE
Geographic coverageTransregional
Records14 geolocated entities
Data sourceRepresentative compilation (manual)
Centroid37.13° N · 63.75° E
Last revisedJun 2026
Provenance & sources

A hand-assembled, representative skeleton of the medieval Silk Road (staging cities, corridor attribution, an indicative date and a nominal traffic volume), simplified from standard accounts for cartographic illustration of route flows.

Recommended citation
Ortelius Editorial Board, ed. “Caravan Legs of the Medieval Silk Road” [dataset]. Ortelius: A Research Atlas of Thematic Cartography, Study AT-046. 2026. doi:10.5281/ortelius.046
DATASET CC BY 4.0 · ENRICHMENT CC0 · CARTOGRAPHY MIT
Data & reproducibility

The published dataset is distributed as CSV with a derived GeoJSON edition; coordinates are decimal degrees on the WGS 84 datum. DOI 10.5281/ortelius.046.