A whole bunch of big technological shocks occurred when Asian innovations - paper, gunpowder, the stirrup, the moldboard plow and so on - came to Europe via the Silk Road.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The Industrial Revolution was another of those extraordinary jumps forward in the story of civilization.
China's history is marked by thousands of years of world-changing innovations: from the compass and gunpowder to acupuncture and the printing press. No one should be surprised that China has re-emerged as an economic superpower.
I wanted to see how flavors, spices, and grains traveled back and forth along the Silk Road and were interpreted by a multitude of cultures' palates.
In the '80s and '90s, China went through a giant change. It needed all resources. At the time, I was in the recycled paper business, and I realized the China market was a blank slate.
The United States as we know it today is largely the result of mechanical inventions, and in particular of agricultural machinery and the railroad.
In the industrial revolution Britain led the world in advances that enabled mass production: trade exchanges, transportation, factory technology and new skills needed for the new industrialised world.
Some countries were able to turn their manufacturing operations into advanced technology areas. South Korea is a great example of this, and manufacturing there is done using advanced technological methods.
Many of the crises we see in the 21st century, I would argue, have their roots in the dawn of the Neolithic.
During the boom years of the 1990s, globalization emerged as the most significant development in our national life. With NAFTA and the Internet and big-box stores selling cheap goods from China, the line between national and international began to blur.
For all the social changes in China can be traced to their early beginnings in the days when the new tools or vehicles of commerce and locomotion first brought the Chinese people into unavoidable contact with the strange ways and novel goods of the Western peoples.