THE SITES OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS. 17
One remnant of departed beauty remains—the ruins of a superb mosque whose lofty façade, fully 7o feet high, is still brilliant with enameled tiles, decorated with richly colored arabesque designs of fifteenth-century Persian artists. We did not excavate this city, but my shafts, sunk to the bottom of its culture-strata, showed that these were based 15 feet below the level of the surrounding plain. The average surface of the interior of the city is 38 feet above the base ; and the floor of the mosque, which stands on the edge of the city, is 29 feet above the base of the culture-strata. The chronological bearing of these data is treated in chapter III.
We have seen how, with the slow trend of climatic change towards aridity life-sustaining areas became gradually restricted to the desert-bound oases. I,et
Fig. 6.—The South Kurgan.
us now consider the relations that existed on the oasis of Anau, between its cultures and their environment. In doing this it will be necessary to describe the manner of growth of this delta-oasis, beginning with a description of the methods employed in the study.
During the brief visit made to the northern one of these kurgans in 1903, the evidently great age of the mound impressed me with a belief that its base would be found to be buried to a greater or less depth in the plain. Our excavations of 1904 proved this to be true. The base of the visible mass of the North Kurgan
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