Mobilità umana, ambiente naturale e interazioni socio-culturali e commerciali su lunga distanza nell’età del Bronzo in Eurasia

Archaeological cultures of the protohistoric Eurasian steppes comprised a vast and heterogeneous mix of mobile pastoralist groups – herders of large flocks of cattle, sheep, goats, horses, and camels – alon- gside mining communities engaged in the extraction of copper ores (notably malachite and lazurite), and seasonal cultivators of millet (Panicum miliaceum) and foxtail millet (Setaria italica). .ese communities established extensive socio-cultural and commercial interactions with the sedentary agricultural populations of the Iranian plateau and adjacent regions, reaching as far as Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, already in the Copper Age and more intensively during the Bronze Age. .e domestication of the horse and the Bactrian camel, and their subsequent di*usion across vast portions of Eurasia during the 4th-3rd millennia BCE, marked the emergence of a new agrarian and pastoral regime. .is development enhanced long-di- stance mobility between northern and southern regions, enabled the crossing of the expansive Eurasian steppe zone and the inhospitable deserts of the Kara-Kum and Kyzyl-Kum, and facilitated the formation of a continental network of exchange as early as the Bronze Age (2nd millennium BCE). .rough this network, knowledge, skills, and innovations circulated widely, millennia prior to the establishment of the Silk Road.