It's a shame that it wasn't explained what makes this signature unusual!
more like https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d1/So... less like 张金山 ?
.noitcerid lamron eht ot etisoppo etorw eh snoitnem osla ti taht eton
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/140886441X https://www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/silk-roads https://silkroad.seetickets.com/timeslots/filter/a-silk-road...
— when the portuguese and spanish started blue-water sailing (~1500), they opened alternative, cheaper, channels for goods which had once passed mostly overland
— when the british industrialised (~1780), textiles went from being an expensive trade good (provided by a decentralised "cottage industry": anyone with a loom and labour could make them) to cheap stuff (provided by centralised factories).
[consider the fates of Old West towns not on the railroad, or Red America towns in "flyover country" not on the freeway: there were some choices to make at the Taklamakan Desert, but otherwise cities of the time were either on the Silk Road, or they were off of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road#/media/File:Seidenst... . These days, instead of places like Palmyra or Bagdad or Samarkand, what's "on it" are no longer cities but strategic points like Suez or Hormuz or Malacca]
EDIT: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2L2U32-BvQ
(in Russian) https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Догубаязит#Транзитный_путь
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_discovery_of_the_se...
Lagniappe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mare_clausum#/media/File:Iberi... (can you spot Brazil in this projection?)
EDIT: note also how the Treaty of Alcáçovas (1479) drew a line across the Atlantic which is still largely conserved by the sea boundary between USEUCOM and USAFRICOM
* EDIT2: could they have charged just enough to make the age of exploration look risky and too expensive, not risky but potentially cheaper?
I really enjoyed reading "City of Fortune: How Venice Ruled the Seas", which taught me that the main thing Venice had going for it was controlling much of the Silk Road trade until Vasco da Gama doomed it in 1498.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople#Impact_...
* compare the translatlantic wave of the 1930s?
Interesting note is Russia colonized Central Asia with the end goal of invading India.
https://www.amazon.com/Great-Game-Struggle-Central-Kodansha/...