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384   ANIMAI, REMAINS FROM THE EXCAVATIONS AT AN AU.

of Camelus knoblochi. Stefanesku discovered in Roumania the bones of a camel which he describes under the name of Camelus alutensis. Pomel describes Camelus thomasi from the Pleistocene of Algeria. Hence it seems to be highly probable, as was first pointed out by Nehring, that the one-humped and the two-humped camels were developed in different countries ; and that while all descended from the ancestral form of the Siwalik Hills, one branch, reaching Western Asia and Eastern Europe, formed Camelus knoblochi and the Camelus alutensis, and probably also the domestic race of the camel found at Anau. This branch was two-humped; while the other branch, passing like the Indian buffalo (Bubalus palceindicus) into Africa, has formed the one-humped variety cf Northern Africa and Arabia.

That the camel was domesticated in very early times is proved by the representations and sculptures of the Assyrians and Persians. In the later Persian monuments of Persepolis and those of the Assyrians of Khorsabad and Nimrud, we frequently see one-humped dromedaries; but it is only on the black obelisk of Nimrud, which is inscribed with an account of the campaigns of Shalmaneser II, King of Assyria from 86o B. c. to 825 B. C., that we see two-humped Bactrian camels, where several cf them are represented under title of payment of tribute of the land of Musri. The land of Musri, which belonged to King Asu of Gurzan , or Gilgani, was situated north of Lake Urmia, in the neighborhood of the Kara Dagli and Mount Ararat. Since our results seem to show that at the time of the oldest culture-strata of Anau the wild camel did not exist in this part of Turkestan, it is possible that the domesticated animal was imported with the goat from Bactriana or from the Iranian plateau.

Ordo PERISSODACTYLA.

EQUIDIE.

Equus caballus Linn eus. (See plate 77, figs. 1-9.)

One of the animals of which we find the greatest quantity of well-preserved bones is a relative of the horse tribe. From the deepest layers, — 24 feet, of the oldest period to the superficial remains of the latest habitations of the North Kurgan, we find great quantities of these bones in all the strata that have been opened. Therefore the equine animals must have been very abundant throughout the life of the kurgan. Notwithstanding this great quantity, it is not easy to form a picture of the equids to which these osseous remains belonged. We have only very few data concerning the bones of the Post-Tertiary and subfossil horses of China, Mongolia, and Central Asia,* which have been only slightly increased by Tscherskit for the Siberian horses.

Nevertheless, despite the defective knowledge concerning the prehistoric horses, Central Asia is looked upon by many authors as the cradle of the European domestic horse, as well as that of the human race in general.

Nehring has, it is true, proved that a domestic horse was formed out of the diluvial horse of Europe on European ground, which took part in the creation

*Gaudry, Journal de Zoologie, Gervais, 1872, t. t, pp. 300-302; M.Wilckens, Nova Acta, Leop.-Carol. deutsch. Akad. d. Naturf., 1888, Bd. LII, No. 5, p. 59.

tTscherski, Mémoires Acad. Imp. St.-Petersburg, vu série, tome xL, pp. 2J7-383, 1893.

Nehring, Fossile Pferde deutschen Diluvial Ablagerungen. Landwirtsch. Jahrbuch, Bd. XIII, 1884.