Many goods reached Rome via the Mediterranean, and goods from Central Asia found their way across the Pacific to Japan and even Java. So we shouldn't think of the Silk Road as a road, but rather as a network of trade routes. But just as now, the goods traveled more than the people who traded them. Very few traders traversed the entire Silk Road. Instead, they'd move back and forth between towns, selling to traders who'd take the goods further toward their destination, with everybody marking up prices along the way. So what'd they trade? Well, silk, for starters.