What are the spice routes?

Question

(in accrodence with the silk road)

Answer 1

The Spice Routes is the name given to the network of sea routes that link the East with the West. They stretch from the west coast of Japan, through the islands of Indonesia, around India to the lands of the Middle East - and from there, across the Mediterranean to Europe. It is a distance of over 15,000 kilometres and, even today, is no easy journey.

The great distances are easy to explain: many of the important spices grew only in the tropical East, from China south to Indonesia, southern India and Sri Lanka. In particular, they grew in the Moluccas or, as they are better known, the Spice Islands. These are mountainous islands strung out like jewels in the Pacific Ocean between Sulawesi (Celebes) and New Guinea. From here came the fragrant spices of cloves and nutmeg which grew nowhere else in the world. To reach the spice markets found across Asia and Europe, the spices had to be transported thousands of kilometres over the seas.