# National Geographic Magazine/Volume 16/The Supposed Birthplace of Civilizations

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THE SUPPOSED BIRTHPLACE OF CIVILIZATIONS
IT can be stated without exaggeration that in central Asia, particularly in Russian Turkestan, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of square miles of buried towns and cities. What processes of nature converted the region from a Garden of Eden, filled with millions of prosperous and wealthy people, into waterless wastes, inhabited only by nomads, are mysteries, to solve which little attempt has been made until recently.
Mr Raphael Pumpelly, known so widely for his work in China, suggested to the Carnegie Institution in 1902 that an examination of the Turkestan ruins might (1) reveal the birthplace of civilization, (2) show how changes in man's environment alter man himself, and (3) give a clue to recent geological time, which is now more or less told by guessing. Inasmuch as geological changes have occurred in central Asia since man has lived there, evidence may be discovered among the traces left by the earlier inhabitants which will tell how long these changes were in the making.
The Carnegie Institution gave Mr Pumpelly a grant sufficient to enable him to make an extended reconnaissance of Turkestan. Mr Pumpelly was accompanied by Prof. William M. Davis, of Harvard University, and Mr Ellsworth Huntington. The results have just been published in a special volume by the Carnegie Institution. In view of the exceeding importance of the investigation, we make the following liberal quotations from Mr Pumpelly's report:
The investigation was proposed because (1) there is a school that still holds the belief that central Asia is the region in which the great civilizations of the Far East and of the West had their origin; and (2) because of the supposed occurrence in that region, in prehistoric times, of great changes of climate, resulting in the formation and recession of an extensive Asian Mediterranean, of which the Aral, Caspian, and Black seas are the principal remnants.
Paikent, a Sand-buried City
The ruins of Paikent represent the type of cities abandoned for lack of water and then buried by the progressive desert sands. Paikent was a great center of wealth and of commerce between China and the west and south till in the early centuries of our era. The recessions of the lower ends of the Zerafshan River brought its doom. Now only the citadel mound and the top of parts of its walls rise above the waves of the invading sands.
From Wm. M. Davis, Carnegie Institution
A Sand Dune Advancing Across the Desert
It had long seemed to me that a study of central Asian archeology would probably yield important evidence in the genealogy of the great civilizations and of several at least of the dominant races, and that a parallel study of the traces of physical changes during Quaternary time might show some coincidence between the phases of social evolution and the changes in environment; further, that it might be possible to correlate the physical and human records and thus furnish a contribution to the scale of recent geology.
While we have been surprised at the abundance of the data in natural and artificial records offered by the region toward these solutions, we are impressed with a realization of the intimate relation in which this region stands to the Quaternary and prehistoric history of the whole continent. Physically it forms part of the great interior region extending from the Mediterranean to Manchuria, whose history has been one of porgressive desiccation, but in Russian Turkestan the effects of this have been mitigated by the snows of the lofty ranges and the lower altitude of the plains.
Archeologically this region has, through a long period, been a center of production and commerce, connecting the eastern, western, and southern nations, and its accumulating wealth has made it repeatedly the prey of invading armies. It has been from remote time the field of contact and con​test between the Turanian and Aryan stocks; but its problems, both physical and archeological, arepartsof the greater problem underlying the study of the development of man and his civilization on the great continent and of the environment conditioning that development.
From. Wm. M. Davis, Carnegie Institution
A Mosque of Mediæval Samarkand
The ruins of Samarkand are very extensive. Its position must have made it an important center for commerce and wealth probably throughout the whole period of prehistoric occupation, as it has been during historic times. Situated in the heart of the very fertile oasis of the Zerafshan River, it lies also on the most open and easiest caravan routes connecting China and eastern Turkestan with Afghanistan, India, and Persia. Samarkand has, even within the past two thousand years, been sacked, destroyed, and rebuilt many times. L,ike Merv, its rebuildings have often been on adjoining sites, and the determining of the whole area covered by these various sites remains to be made. There is evidence that it is very extensive.
As in all Turkestan, so at Samarkand, the older structures still standing are those of the Mohammedan period. The many immense and wonderfully decorated mosques built by Tamerlane, though now falling into ruin, belong among the wonders of the world; and this not only on account of their great size, but also because of the beauty of their decoration. Seen from Afrosiab, these ruins tower high above the rich foliage of the oasis city—evidence of the wealth of treasure that Tamerlane had accumulated in Turkestan within two centuries after Genghis Khan had sacked the country and massacred much of the population.
The many fragmentary peoples surviving in the remote corners and in the protected mountain fastnesses of Asia, preserving different languages, arts, and customs, indicate a very remote period of differentiation, with subsequent long periods for separate development. They point also to the long periods of unrest and battling in which the survivors of the vanquished were forced into their present refuges. And this unrest was probably the remote prototype of that which in the later prehistoric and historic time sent out its waves from the Aralo- Caspian basin. It was probably from the beginning a condition in which the slowly progressive change toward ​aridity in the interior Asia was ever forcing emigration outward, displacing other peoples, and thus working against the establishment of a stable equilibrium of population. Asia is thus the field for applying all the comparative sciences that relate to the history of man—the materials that lie in cave deposits, in rock pictographs, in tumuli, dolmens, and ruined towns, in languages, customs, religions, design patterns, and anthropological measurements.
Turkestan, from its geographical position, must have been the stage on which the drama of Asiatic life was epitomized through all these ages of ferment. Peoples and civilizations appeared and disappeared, leaving their records buried in ashes and earth; but the fertility of the soil produced wealth, and the position kept it ever a commercial center.
So far as our problems of archeology and physical geography are concerned, Turkestan is practically a virgin field. In geology and cartography the Russians have done a surprising amount of excellent work; but the modern methods of physico-geographic study have been only begun to be applied, and the little archeological work done there has been mostly in the nature of hunting curios and treasure, chiefly by foreigners, and in so destructive a manner that the Russian government has till now wisely prohibited excavations.
From Ellsworth Huntington, Carnegie Institution
Folds in the Limestone in the Sugun Valley west of Shor Kul, looking west
From Ellsworth Huntington, Carnegie Institution
Limestone Gorge of the Western Kichik Alai
Where it enters the Ispairan River on the north side of the Alai Mountains. Probably the upper portion of the gorge was widened by a glacier, and the narrow slit at the bottom represents post-Glacial cutting. The main valley, from the side of which the photograph was taken, is clearly of glacial origin, and the side valley must have borne a hanging relation to that of the master stream.
We have shown that the recent physical history of the region is legibly recorded in glacial sculpture and moraines, in orogenic movements, in valley-cutting and terracing, in lake expansions, and ​in the building up of the plains, and we have made some progress in correlating these events.
The Kirghiz in the Alai Valley
We have also found full confirmation of the statements as to a progressive desiccation of the region of long standing which has from a remote period continually converted cultivable lands into deserts and buried cities in sand.
We have found widely distributed great and small abandoned sites of human occupation with evidences of great antiquity.
We have reason to think that a correlation of these physical and human events may be obtained through continuance of the investigation, and that archeological excavations will throw light on the origin of Western and Eastern civilizations.