The Empire of the Silk Road and the “Babel of Nations”

Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present is one of my favorite books because it combines erudition with trenchent and opinionated analysis. One of the arguments explicit within the author’s narrative is that the geographic parameters of Eurasian steppe created a set of societies and cultures which shaped world-history. In particular, implicit within Empires of the Silk Road is the thesis explicit in The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies, that Eurasian steppe pastoralists served as innovators and mediators of cultural motifs and practices across the Eurasian oikoumene. In Halford Mackinder’s formulation the “Rimland” and “Heartland” were symbiotic.

A new preprint, A dynamic 6,000-year genetic history of Eurasia’s Eastern Steppe, illuminates the genetic/demographic dynamics in an important region of the steppe:

The Eastern Eurasian Steppe was home to historic empires of nomadic pastoralists, including the Xiongnu and the Mongols. However, little is known about the region’s population history. Here we reveal its dynamic genetic history by analyzing new genome-wide data for 214 ancient individuals spanning 6,000 years. We identify a pastoralist expansion into Mongolia ca. 3000 BCE, and by the Late Bronze Age, Mongolian populations were biogeographically structured into three distinct groups, all practicing dairy pastoralism regardless of ancestry. The Xiongnu emerged from the mixing of these populations and those from surrounding regions. By comparison, the Mongols exhibit much higher Eastern Eurasian ancestry, resembling present-day Mongolic-speaking populations. Our results illuminate the complex interplay between genetic, sociopolitical, and cultural changes on the Eastern Steppe.

The Eastern Eurasian Steppe was home to historic empires of nomadic pastoralists, including the Xiongnu and the Mongols. However, little is known about the region’s population history. Here we reveal its dynamic genetic history by analyzing new genome-wide data for 214 ancient individuals spanning 6,000 years. We identify a pastoralist expansion into Mongolia ca. 3000 BCE, and by the Late Bronze Age, Mongolian populations were biogeographically structured into three distinct groups, all practicing dairy pastoralism regardless of ancestry. The Xiongnu emerged from the mixing of these populations and those from surrounding regions. By comparison, the Mongols exhibit much higher Eastern Eurasian ancestry, resembling present-day Mongolic-speaking populations. Our results illuminate the complex interplay between genetic, sociopolitical, and cultural changes on the Eastern Steppe.

The Xiongnu are important for two reasons. The less interesting reason is that they are posited to be the forerunners of the Huns. The more interesting reason is that many historians suggest that the emergence of organized steppe pastoralist polities on the northern and western flank of China drove the integration of the Han into a singular imperial system.

Though the historical dynamics are outside of the purview of this post, these results confirm that the advanced stages of the Xiongnu confederation were attractive to a diverse array of peoples, from steppe Iranians to Han.

The time transect is probably best illustrated by this figure from the supplements: