Nomads were setting food trends along the Silk Roads

The Silk Roads stretched from Asia to Europe. From the 2nd century BC until the 16th century AD, people along this trade route exchanged goods like wool, gold, silver, and silk of course—but food has often been missing from understandings of the exchange system. New research is revealing that the food trendsetters along the Silk Road may have been mobile pastoralists, often called “nomads”. This was the finding of an international research team from Kiel University, Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri/USA, and the Academy of Science of Uzbekistan. They used isotope analysis on human bones to unlock the dietary habits along the Central Asian part of Silk Road network. The results of the research were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

The Silk Road was based on a dynamic between settled populations and communities that were more mobile. Against this background, Taylor R. Hermes, a doctoral researcher in the Graduate School “Human Development in Landscapes” at Kiel University, examined how these communities differed in terms of diet and how their food strategies may have influenced one another during flourishing trans-regional trade. Read more.