20 Hryven Chumaky's Way

Chumaky's Way — the overland salt and fish trade routes that connected the Ukrainian steppe to Crimean and Black Sea markets from roughly the 15th through 19th centuries — was operated almost entirely by chumaky, ox-cart merchants who formed a distinct social class with their own songs, folklore, and burial customs. The routes fell into irrelevance after the railway network reached southern Ukraine in the 1860s and 1870s, effectively ending a tradition that had defined steppe commerce for four centuries.