The famous commercial route unites scientists from various fields and different countries.
The Silk Road greatly facilitated long-distance and large-scale exchanges of economy, agriculture, religions, culture, and technology across Eurasia, having a far-reaching impact on the progress and development of human civilization. Even before it has been opened, the region it crosses was an important East-West link, with multiple paths and extensive population dispersal, economic and cultural exchanges. It traverses complex terrain and landscapes including plateaus, Gobi Deserts, oases, mountains, basins, forests, and steppes across Eurasia.
Despite the importance of this region, there are critical gaps in systematic sorting and communication on scientific issues such as the early human dispersal, agricultural and pastoral development, route shift and demise, technology development and exchange, civilization evolution, and environment changes, as well as a lack of sufficient data, models and theoretical support, which limits the comprehensive study and scientific understanding of East-West exchanges along the Silk Road regions.
Interdisciplinary research
An international conference, held from August 23 to 25, 2023, in Lanzhou, China, will bring together renowned experts and scholars from the Silk Road countries and other regions, to share the most recent findings of interdisciplinary research. It will also discuss the future development of the Association for Trans-Eurasia Exchange and Silk-Road Civilization Development (ATES), that was established in 2019 under the Alliance of International Science Organizations (ANSO).
ATES will take the opportunity of this conference to hold also the « ATES Workshop on Environment Change and Sustainable Development along the Silk Road », mainly for young scholars from developing countries along the Silk Road. It will carry out basic scientific research theories, methods and skills training such as environmental change, human civilization development, and scientific and technological exchanges, and deepen the concept of basic scientific research to promote sustainable development.
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