A team of European and Kazakh archaeologists embark on an expedition across the Central Asian steppe, delving into the ancient history of early human and Neanderthal civilizations in search of clues that shed light on the beginnings of the renowned Silk Road trade route.
Far before its emergence in the 2nd Century BC, and well before the silk trade, this expansive network of routes had already been 50,000 years in the making. Traversing over 2,500 km from the Uzbek to the Russian border, scientists search for traces that may hold the missing key to how extreme climatic events spurred prehistoric mass migrations, bringing an unprecedented encounter between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.
These discoveries will help explain how climate change and geography fueled key genetic exchanges in human evolution, helped shape the structure of modern Asian populations, and later enabled the explosion of culture and trade along these routes. Their findings show how humans coped with inhospitable environments and cemented the nomadic cultures still present in modern-day Kazakhstan.
