Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Silk Road was a network of Asian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. It spanned over 6400 km on land and connected the Eastern and Western worlds through economic, cultural, political, and religious exchange.
The Silk Road takes its name from the lucrative trade in silk textiles produced primarily in China. Ferdinand von Richthofen popularized the German term Seidenstraße, meaning Silk Road, in 1877, though the southern routes were first used for jade as long ago as 5000 BCE.
China's Han dynasty initiated the Silk Road, opening a route across the Tarim Basin and Hexi Corridor around 130 BCE. The envoy Zhang Qian, originally sent to seek an alliance against the Xiongnu, provided the reports that trail-blazed the network.
After the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BCE, trade between China, India, and Rome blossomed, driven by a Roman craze for Chinese silk. According to Strabo, up to 120 ships sailed each year from Myos Hormos in Roman Egypt to India by the time of Augustus.
The Black Death, which devastated Europe starting in the late 1340s, may have reached Europe along the trade routes of the Mongol Empire. Strong evidence ties its origin to marmots in Central Asia, carried westward to the Black Sea by Silk Road traders.
The fragmentation of the Mongol Empire loosened the political, cultural, and economic unity of the Silk Road. The decline of nomad power, the devastation of the Black Death, and from 1453 Ottoman competition over the overland routes pushed European powers toward sea routes and the Age of Discovery.