What is the significance of the Silk Road?

Silk Road, a trade and cultural exchanges road which have more than two thousand years of the history. This semester we have learned knowledge about all aspects of the Silk Road, and now, when we look again toward the road with vicissitudes in the sand and the long silence, as if we can also through thousands of years of time to see it'sprosperity. This road has attracted the attention of many people, including government officials, scholars, professors and ordinary students, businessmen, tourists. What is the value of it? What’s significance that we understand it, learn it, research it, and develop it? This article briefly describes the historical significance of Silk Road: including trade, scientific and technological, political, ethnic, religious, artistic; academic research value of Silk Road: for history, geography, sociology, etc.;the value of the Silk Road tourism development.