The Maritime Silk Road or Maritime Silk Route[1] is the maritime section of the historic Silk Road that connected China, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian Peninsula, Somalia, Egypt and Europe. It began by the 2nd century BCE and flourished later on until the 15th century CE.[2] Major players in the Maritime Silk Road include the merchants from the Tang, Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties of imperial China,[3]Austronesian sailors in Southeast Asia,[4]: 11 Tamil merchants in India and Southeast Asia,[4]: 13 and Persian and Arab traders in the Arabian Sea and beyond.[4]: 13 The network followed the footsteps of older maritime networks in Southeast Asia,[5][6][7][8] as well as the maritime spice networks of Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka, India, and the Indian Ocean, coinciding with these ancient maritime trade roads by the current era.[9][10]
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^Tsang, Cheng-hwa (2000). "Recent advances in the Iron Age archaeology of Taiwan". Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association. 20: 153–158. doi:10.7152/bippa.v20i0.11751 (inactive 2024-04-12). ISSN1835-1794.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of April 2024 (link)
^Bellwood, Peter; Hung, H.; Lizuka, Yoshiyuki (2011). "Taiwan Jade in the Philippines: 3,000 Years of Trade and Long-distance Interaction". In Benitez-Johannot, P. (ed.). Paths of Origins: The Austronesian Heritage in the Collections of the National Museum of the Philippines, the Museum Nasional Indonesia, and the Netherlands Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde. ArtPostAsia. ISBN978-971-94292-0-3.
^Mahdi, Waruno (1999). "The Dispersal of Austronesian boat forms in the Indian Ocean". In Blench, Roger; Spriggs, Matthew (eds.). Archaeology and Language III: Artefacts languages, and texts. One World Archaeology. Vol. 34. Routledge. pp. 144–179. ISBN978-0415100540.