Silk Road

The other day I was reading a few articles regarding the initial spread of Black Death in medieval Europe and the importance of the Silk Road in its dispersal. The analogies with contemporary diseases are somehow evident. Can the Silk Road, a major transportation/communication path between Asia and Europe in medieval times and throughout centuries, be compared to a modern-day air connection between any two major international airports? In other words, the Silk Road was as much an important factor for the dissemination of the Black Death, originated in Asia, as the air connection between Hong Kong and Dublin was for the spread of SARS. Contemporary international airports usually belong to large hubs of social network, the city itself, and are usually the biggest link of interactions between any two of these large hubs. Nowadays airports are critical segments in the spreading of any human disease, such as routers in any computer virus. The bigger they are the larger the number of links, the higher the probability of dissemination. These significant pathways should be important objects of study.