From the s until the early s 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 use of a wider rail gauge by the railways of the former Russian Empire and Soviet Union than most of the rest of Europe and China.
China's rail system had long linked to the Trans-Siberian via northeastern China and Mongolia. In , China added a link between its rail system and the Trans-Siberian via Kazakhstan. In addition to Kazakhstan, the railways connect with other countries in Central Asia and the Middle East, including Iran. Proposed expansion of the Eurasian Land Bridge includes construction of a railway across Kazakhstan that is the same gauge as Chinese and European railways standard gauge , as opposed to 1, mm gauge in the former Russian Empire and the Soviet Union , 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 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 8,kilometre-long 5, mi 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. Exports from Asia transported along the Silk Road included fabrics, carpets, furs, weapons, utensils, metals, farm produce, livestock and slaves.
Beginning in the 5th century AD, new land routes between Asia and Europe developed further to the north.
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.
