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The Eurasian Land Bridge ((ロシア語:Евразийский сухопутный мост), ''Yevraziyskiy sukhoputniy most''), sometimes called the New Silk Road (Новый шёлковый путь, ''Noviy shyolkoviy put Completed in 1916, the Trans-Siberian connects Moscow with Russian Pacific seaports such as Vladivostok. From the 1960s until the early 1990s the railway served as the primary land bridge between Asia and Europe, until several factors caused the use of the railway for transcontinental freight to dwindle. One factor is that the railways of the former Soviet Union use a wider rail gauge than most of the rest of Europe as well as China. Recently, however, the Trans-Siberian has regained ground as a viable land route between the two continents. China's rail system had long linked to the Trans-Siberian via northeastern China and Mongolia. In 1990 China added a link between its rail system and the Trans-Siberian via Kazakhstan. China calls its uninterrupted rail link between the port city of Lianyungang and Kazakhstan the ''New Eurasian Land Bridge'' or ''Second Eurasian Continental Bridge''. In addition to Kazakhstan, the railways connect with other countries in Central Asia and the Middle East, including Iran. With the October 2013 completion of the rail link across the Bosphorus under the Marmaray project the New Eurasian Land Bridge now theoretically connects to Europe via Central and South Asia. Proposed expansion of the Eurasian Land Bridge includes construction of a railway across Kazakhstan that is the same gauge as Chinese railways, rail links to India, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, construction of a rail tunnel and highway bridge across the Bering Strait to connect the Trans-Siberian to the North American rail system, and construction of a rail tunnel between South Korea and Japan. The United Nations has proposed further expansion of the Eurasian Land Bridge, including the Trans-Asian Railway project. ==History== Commercial traffic between Europe and Asia took place along the Silk Road from at least the 2nd millennium BC. The Silk Road was not a specific thoroughfare, but a general route used by traders to travel, much of it by land, between the two continents along the Eurasian Steppes through Central Asia. The long route was used to exchange goods, ideas and people primarily between China and India and the Mediterranean and helped create a single-world system of trade between the civilisations of Europe and Asia.〔Christian; Ōtsuka, p. 42.〕 Exports from Asia transported along the Silk Road included fabrics, carpets, furs, weapons, utensils, metals, farm produce, livestock and slaves. Civilisations active in trading during the road's history included Scythia, Ancient and Byzantine Greece, the Han and Tang dynasties, Parthia, Rouran, Sogdiana, Göktürks, Xiongnu, Yuezhi and the Mongol Empire.〔Christian.〕 Beginning in the 5th century AD, new land routes between Asia and Europe developed further to the north, in the Rus'. Many of these routes passed through Yugra and extended to the Baltic region. The Khazars, Volga Bulgaria, and the Rus' Khaganate were active in trading along the northern trade routes.〔 Traffic along the southern Silk Road routes greatly diminished with the Fall of Constantinople in the 15th century and development of the sea route around the Cape of Good Hope in the 16th century. By the 18th century, European influence on trade and new national boundaries severely restricted the movement of traders along all land routes between Europe and China, and overland trade between East Asia and Europe virtually disappeared.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Eurasian Land Bridge」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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