From the 2nd century BCE until the late Middle Ages, the Silk Road brought goods overland from East Asia to the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. Researchers have recently discovered that, 1,300 years ago, it went through the Aravah—a region of southeastern Israel stretching along the Jordanian border from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. Tobias Siegel writes:
In a joint excavation sponsored by Germany and carried out by the University of Haifa, the University of Göttingen, and the Israel Antiquities Authority, large quantities of cotton and silk fabrics that likely originated in China, India, and modern-day Sudan during the 8th century CE were uncovered in a massive garbage pit at the Nahal Omer site in the Arava Valley, according to a statement issued by the researchers on Wednesday.
“The findings include a large proportion of imported items, including fabrics bearing typical decorations of Indian origin and silk items from China,” said Dr. Orit Shamir from the Israel Antiquities Authority, an expert on ancient textiles in Israel. “This is the first time that these items dating back to this period have been found in Israel,” she said.
[These] findings seem to provide the first evidence that there was also an Israeli route used by traveling international merchants; . . . researchers were surprised to find “a veritable treasure trove” that included fabrics, items of clothing, hygienic products, leather straps, belts, socks, shoe soles, and combs. This wealth of organic material allows the researchers to precisely date the items to the 7th or 8th centuries CE using carbon dating.
Read more on Times of Israel: https://www.timesofisrael.com/first-evidence-of-unknown-ancient-israeli-silk-road-uncovered-in-arava-trash-dump/