Should we throw out everything we’ve learned about the Silk Roads?

Should we throw out everything we’ve learned about the Silk Roads? 

 The writer William Dalrymple thinks that we should in this fascinating essay for the Guardian titled "The Silk Road still casts a spell, but was the ancient trading route just a Western invention?"  He notes that the term “silk road” was a Western invention popularized by a Prussian geographer in 1877 and did not appear in English until 1938. 

Since then, Dalrymple says, “the term has captured the global imagination.” Indeed, we now teach the Silk Road as an east-west exchange over which goods like silk traveled from China to Rome. 

But, according to Dalrymple, silk was “never the main commodity imported to the west from the East.” Goods from China reached Rome through India. 

 “The best place to buy silks,” argues Dalrymple, “are the ports of Gujarat, where much of the silk that reached the west was manufactured.  If China and the west ever came face to face, they did so here in the quays, ports and bazaars of coastal India.”

Should we change how we teach the Silk Roads?