During the Classical Era, long-distance trade routes (Greece to China) were predominately land-based while some short-distance ones took place around Mediterranean and other seas (Egypt to Greece). Today's travel routes are very different as we have begun to use flight to get from point A to point B. Additionally, while the goal in the past was to connect Europe to Asia, today we seem more focused on connecting the Eastern Hemisphere with the Western Hemisphere and thus we look across the large oceans more so than was done in the Classical Era.