SUCCESSIVE GROWTHS AND DISSECTIONS OF THE PLAIN. 25
It is only after understanding these facts that we have been able to explain the reason why the regions only a quarter of a mile to the east and west of the axis of this channel and its growth were depressions to a depth of about 15 feet when the next cutting-down began. These depressions afterwards afforded excellent areas for irrigation and became filled with irrigating sediments, so that they are no longer evidenced on the surface. However much difficulty there may have been in preventing their stream from permanently bursting out to either of these depressions, the people of the South Kurgan had no more difficulty after it had begun to reexcavate the little valley, so that although the kurgan was soon afterwards abandoned and left unoccupied during the "period not represented by culture-strata," the stream continued there in loneliness unused until the reoccupation of the town by the people of the iron culture, who found it refilling the valley with sediments. When the founders of Anau City arrived, the valley was only 8 feet deep at the South Kurgan and must have been even shallower at the apex of the fan, so that there was no difficulty in deflecting the stream to the new city.—R. W. P.
Fig. 1 3.—Odontche Tepe, 80 feet high, on Mery Oasis.
Fig. 14.—Erecting a Kibitka.
This occurred at about the time that the alluvial growth reached its maximum height as shown in shaft B, for this growth stopped at the beginning of irrigation, and irrigation began at about the time of the founding of Anau. It is, indeed, not unlikely that a similar diversion of the stream caused the abandonment of the North Kurgan and the subsequent choice of the site of the South Kurgan.
The fact that a settlement had attained to a height of 50 or 6o feet above the plain would perhaps seem to us a reason for choosing a new site, but such does not appear to have been a motive in Central Asia. Height was apparently much
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