The Chinese used silk as fishing line, to buy off nomadic raiders to keep things peaceful, and to write before they invented paper. But as an export, silk was mostly used for clothes. Silk clothing feels light in the summer and warm in the winter, and until we invented $700 pre-distress designer jeans, decking yourself out in silk was the number one way to show people that you were wealthy. Thanks, Thought Bubble. But the Silk Road wasn't all about silk. The Mediterranean exported such cliché goods as olives, olive oil, wine, and mustachioed plumbers. China also exported raw materials like jade, silver, and iron.