On the Paleo-climatic/Environmental Impacts and Socio-Cultural System Resilience along the Historical Silk Road

Abstract

This chapter introduces, by literature reviews, the issue of the links and processes behind climate change, environmental change, and socio-culture change in the past at the ancient Silk Road region. Analyses of the changes of the socioenvironment system in this area enhance our understanding on the regular patterns of coupled natural and social evolution, and is thus of important theoretical and practical significance. We argue that the cross-cutting theme has been to reach beyond simple explanations of environmental or human determinism, but social resilience under environmental impacts. Studies indicate both that climate conditions significantly influence human socio-cultural systems and that the socio-culture systems are certainly resilient to climate impacts. This chapter also summarizes the scope of all chapters in this book by illustrating the specific topics, research areas, focused periods and their inner relationships. The conclusion further summarizes the recent research states on past socio-environmental dynamics and the findings achieved in this book, as well as some outlooks.

Biomolecular Evidence of Early Human Occupation of a High-Altitude Site in Western Central Asia During the Holocene

“…Being located along the ancient Silk Road, the territory of Kyrgyzstan represented an important corridor for cultural exchange and trade in the past. The Silk Road was a complex network of trade and travel routes, which enabled both cultural interaction and the trading of goods between Central Asia, the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean (Hansen, 2012;Yang et al, 2019b). Therefore, it functioned as a "Cultural Bridge" between Asia and Europe (Foltz, 2010;Yang et al, 2019b) and had a profound influence on societal development.…”

“…The Silk Road was a complex network of trade and travel routes, which enabled both cultural interaction and the trading of goods between Central Asia, the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean (Hansen, 2012;Yang et al, 2019b). Therefore, it functioned as a "Cultural Bridge" between Asia and Europe (Foltz, 2010;Yang et al, 2019b) and had a profound influence on societal development. Even though the relevance of the Silk Road is conventionally constrained to the second century BC, exchange and migration occurred well before that (Taylor et al, 2019).…”

“…BP but later left the area again, probably focusing on other, more habitable regions. The migration from one region to another after the consumption of resources in one area is commonly observed along the Silk Road (Yang et al, 2019b). This does not necessarily entail the collapse of a population, but rather reflects high adaptability and resilience of social groups (Yang et al, 2019b).…”

“…Owing to its location at the crossroads between East and West and the related importance for migration and cultural exchanges (Agatova et al, 2014) for early humans and later as part of the ancient Silk Road, Central Asia has recently become a focus region with respect to investigating the occupation of high-altitude regions by early human civilizations (Bae et al, 2017;Hessl et al, 2017;Yang et al, 2019a). Due to the harsh environment, featuring dry deserts, cold mountains and seasonal grasslands, a nomadic pastoral culture has predominantly prevailed in the mountainous regions of Arid Central Asia, which is contrary to Monsoon Asia where sedentary agriculturalists predominated (Hessl et al, 2017;Yang et al, 2019b). Despite its crucial role in cultural development and human migration patterns, little is known about the early history of human occupation of Western Central Asia as part of the Silk Road territory, especially during the period between the Paleolithic and the mid-Holocene (Shnaider S. V. et al, 2018).…”

Dietary shift and social hierarchy from the Proto-Shang to Zhou Dynasty in the Central Plains of China

“…Weiss et al 1993, Staubwasser et al 2003, Wu and Liu 2004, Kuper and Kröpelin 2006. In some cases, however, ancient societies displayed a significant degree of resilience to climate change, such as in northwestern China (Ma et al 2016, Berger and, the Indus river basin of India (Petrie et al 2017), the Maya civilization of Central America (Dunning et al 2012), Southwest Asia (Flohr et al 2016), and areas along the historic Silk Road (Yang et al 2019a). Technological innovation and its widespread impact played an important role in social transformations and human-environment interactions during the period between the third and first millennium BCE (Diamond and Bellwood 2003, Chen et al 2015a, Dong et al 2017a.…”