Guimarães is where Portugal starts. Afonso Henriques was born here, fought the Battle of São Mamede here in 1128, and used the town as the base from which he detached the county of Portucale from León and made himself king. Every guidebook says so, usually with the words carved on a wall near the station: here Portugal was born. Which makes the shrine standing in the middle of the town’s oldest square slightly awkward, because it commemorates a battle Portugal fought on Castilian soil, in a Castilian dynastic cause, to defend a Castilian king.

The term “Silk Road” was coined in 1877 by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen, who needed a name for the overland routes linking China to the Mediterranean. He chose silk because it was the commodity Westerners most associated with China and because names that invoke specific luxury goods travel better than abstract geographical descriptions. The name has persisted for 150 years while misleading almost everyone who uses it about what the routes actually were and what actually moved along them.