The modern highway across the Sahara desert linked Europe and North Africa, with the vast interior of West Africa. this desert trade route, helped to promote tourism, trade, and economic growth. This trade route also provided an alternative route to West African muslims making the pilgrimage to Mecca.
In these chapters both, the silk roads across Eurasia, and the trans- Saharan trade route are examples of that economic change among distant people is not a new concept. The beginnings of economic globalization lie deep in the routes of the classical era.
Trade provided  day to day work, trade also influenced the decisions of people living in these civilizations. People would generally work in creating products that were high in the trade "market", with different ecological zones- different types of production can be produced, thus leaving trade globally around the world.
Political life was a result of trade. The wealth available from controlling and taxing trade. Trade enabled  social mobility, religious ideas, technological innovations, disease/germs, and animals. The routes of trade force has historically changed the lands for eternity
A succesful culture, that has transformed all the way to todays society, was Buddhism. Buddhism started as indian civilizations, that has spread through Central Asia. Started on the silk roads. Buddhism has earned the respect to continue throughout civilizations and is still respectable today.