Traversing the ancient Overland Silk Road: Insights from domestic camel paleogenomics in Xi’an, China
Jun-Xia Yuan, Dong-Qi Yu, Ji Li, Bo Xiao, Shi-Wen Song, Ming-Min Zheng, Chang Dai, Yuan Zhang, Ling-Yu Zheng, Xue-Li Shen, Jia-Ming Hu, Xu-Long Lai, Hu-Jun Gong, Kun Xie, Gui-Lian Sheng · 2026
Read Traversing the ancient Overland Silk Road: Insights from domestic camel paleogenomics in Xi’an, China by Jun-Xia Yuan, Dong-Qi Yu, Ji Li, Bo Xiao, Shi-Wen Song, Ming-Min Zheng, Chang Dai, Yuan Zhang, Ling-Yu Zheng, Xue-Li Shen, Jia-Ming Hu, Xu-Long Lai, Hu-Jun Gong, Kun Xie, Gui-Lian Sheng (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13647054.txt.
Description
Jun-Xia Yuan and a large team read the genes of ancient camels dug up in Xi'an, China, to trace how these animals moved along the old Silk Road. Their study was published in twenty twenty-six. Camels were key pack animals for that trade, yet few old gene samples exist.
The team took full maternal gene sets and partial wider genomes from three camel remains, dated from about three hundred to over two thousand years old. Two were domestic Bactrian camels. One was an Arabian camel, the first such bone find in China backed by gene proof. Maternal lines showed weak sorting by place, which fits wide movement driven by people. The work shows trade carried camels far from their home ranges.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Jun-Xia Yuan, Dong-Qi Yu, Ji Li, Bo Xiao, Shi-Wen Song, Ming-Min Zheng, Chang Dai, Yuan Zhang, Ling-Yu Zheng, Xue-Li Shen, Jia-Ming Hu, Xu-Long Lai, Hu-Jun Gong, Kun Xie, Gui-Lian Sheng |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 29 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |