Special issue on Human-Social Evolution in the Eastern Silk Road

The eastern section of the Silk Road, referred to as the "Chang'an-Tianshan Corridor road network", particularly in the Gansu-Qinghai region, has long been a significant hub for cross-regional population and cultural exchanges since Neolithic. This area has been witness to substantial movements of people along with their lifestyles between eastern and western Eurasian groups, nomadic and agricultural societies, as well as individuals from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and lowlands, making it an ideal location for studying population admixture and trans-Eurasian exchange. The diverse geographical and ecological landscape of the eastern Silk Road has shaped ancient populations' adaptation to their surroundings and the development of livelihood technologies tailored to different ecological niches, and influenced population migrations and cultural evolution over time. However, the interactions between population movement, cultural exchange, and environmental change along the eastern Silk Road across different time periods remains largely unexplored. Interdisciplinary research, drawing on methodologies from linguistics, genetics, archaeology and geography, is crucial for studying the human history of this crossroads for human migration and cultural exchange in the old world. The convergence of these disciplines offers a fresh perspective for comparative research on cultural and genetic dynamics, enhancing our comprehension of the roots in cultural and ethnic landscape changes from an interdisciplinary perspective.

This special issue calls for Reviews, Perspectives, and Research Articles that offer interdisciplinary and quantitative analysis to enhance our understanding of human and social evolution along the eastern section of the Silk Road. We are particularly interested in, but not limited to, the following topics:

1. The origins, migrations, and admixtures of human populations in the Eastern Silk Road
2. The impact of trans-regional exchange on socio-cultural evolution
3. Human society-environment interactions in the Eastern Silk Road
4. The interplay of the human-environment system in the Eastern Silk Road on a global scale

Deadline for manuscript submissions:

February 1^st, 2025

Submission instructions：

Please read the Guide for Authors before submitting. All articles should be submitted online. Please select Human history in the Eastern Silk Road as the article type on submission. All submissions will be subject to peer review.

Guest editors：

If you would like to discuss any aspect of this special issue, please do not hesitate to contact one of the guest editors: