FIRST CIVILIZATION— ENEOLITHIC. 41
The most striking feature of this culture was, however, its part in the domestication of the useful animals. In Dr. Duerst 's report which he has written with greater conservatism than he has used in conversation and correspondence, the reader can follow the chain of investigation of the comparative anatomist and see the proof of the domestication through the changes gradually wrought thereby in the different animals. He shows that during the earlier centuries, while the lower Io feet of culture-strata were accumulating, these people knew only wild animals which they hunted for food. Then came a great change. The mighty Bos namadicus, the Asiatic urus, was tamed and converted to their use, then the horse, the pig, and successively two distinct breeds from the great-horned mountain sheep. I imagine that the taming of these animals may have been rendered relatively easy by the changing climatic conditions, which forced the remnants of once great herds of wild animals into close proximity to the people on the oasis.
Fig. I 9.—Turkoman Woman Baking Bread.
A horizontal red layer at about 35 feet above the base extends through the kurgan and undoubtedly records a conflagration. This would seem to show also that the houses of that time were thatched ; and this would indicate a climate that favored a more abundant vegetation than now obtains. The same culture continues above this line until it ceases abruptly at 45 feet above the base, and is replaced, without transition, by an entirely new population bringing in culture II.
There is nothing to show whether the population abandoned the site voluntarily or were driven out or exterminated by an enemy. Some skeletons of adults, who seem not to have been formally buried, were found at this level, and these may be for us the record of a final tragedy. On the other hand, our physiographic analysis of the climatic changes shows a proximate coincidence between the ending of this culture and an extreme of aridity.
IIIFカラー高解像度
