[alloysteel]

Trade routes extended even further than that. The Roman Empire had quite a reach, and what they did not come in contact with, the Phoenicians and later the Arabian sailors penetrated much of Africa beyond the Sahara and the equator.

Trade routes would have survived the fall of the western Roman Empire, as Norsemen reached into Spain and even parts of northern Africa, and when they got over the first fever of piracy, they too settled into relatively peaceful trading.

[SunkenCiv]

I wholeheartedly agree. The ancientnavigation keyword has a number of topics pertaining (at least in part) to both Roman and Byzantine trade, both of which were widespread. These two links are to topic postings that have 100 chrono-sorted topics from that keyword:

• Silver in ancient Egyptian bracelets provides earliest evidence for long-distance trade between Egypt and Greece [06/05/2023]
• Shell beads discovery sheds light on Stone Age seafaring [05/30/2023]