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The Great Silk Road is rightly considered to be one of the remarkable achievements of the ancient civilizations. For the first time in the history of mankind it has connected different countries and nations from the Mediterranean to the Pacific Ocean, has combined their material, art and spiritual cultures. For many centuries on this route people were interchanging handicrafts, technologies, ideas and beliefs.
The Great Silk Road is a unique phenomenon in the history of mankind, with its aspiration for unity and cultural values exchange, its conquests of lands and monopolization of the markets. They say in the orient, "A sitting man is like a mat, a walking man is like a river". Life is motion, and traveling, perceiving of outer world have always been the driving force for progress.
When in the second half of the 19th century German orientalist Ferdinand Richthoven, who investigated the ancient caravan trails heading from the East to the West, in his fundamental scientific work titled "China" for the first time coined the term "Silk Road", he did not expect, that only one and a half century later the term "The Great Silk Road" would become a global historical brand.
The Great Silk Road is of outstanding cultural value to humanity. This accounts for the emphasis that UNESCO, a UN division handling educational, scientific and cultural matters, puts to the study as well as preservation of the great heritage passed on by the ancient nations.
The Great Silk Road is an ancient transcontinental trade highway, which for centuries connected East and West. It was also a channel along which the achievements of human intellect in scientific, technical, cultural, spiritual spheres were transferred and it played a big role in the development of the world civilization. The public interest to the Great Silk Road grew in early-1990s, when five Central Asian countries, whose territories were intersected by main caravan trails in the past, achieved their independence.
Today, as many countries are determined to put forth every effort in order to revive the Great Silk Road, a growing number of people take a lively interest in the history of this ancient transcontinental trade highway, as well as in the unique ancient monuments, national arts and crafts, cuisine, traditions and holidays of the peoples of the region, in the long-standing cultural wealth passed down to us by the renowned ancestors.