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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

the evidence of a period of desiccation immediately preceding the founding of
Ghiaur Kala and contemporaneous with that in which the cutting-down of the
valley occurred at Anau between the copper and iron cultures.

Standing on the citadel of Ghiaur Kala and looking north, one can see
nearly thirty high ruins of ancient sites scattered over the delta-oasis. And Mr.
Huntington, as he shows in his report, found numerous others spreading out far
beyond these. While the highly deformed and wasted shapes of some of these
show that they belong doubtless in a previous cycle, many others belong clearly
in the present cycle, and some of these seem from their state of preservation to have
been abandoned less than a thousand years ago. One of these, Odontche tepe,
which lies on the desert 10 or 12 miles north of Ghiaur Kala, proved not only
by its state of preservation, but also by pottery identical in character with that
of the later layers of Ghiaur Kala, to belong in the earlier centuries of our era.
Of these sites the older, greatly wasted ones appear, as stated, to belong to the
previous or copper cycle, when abundant water kept the delta and its apex farther
north. Ghiaur Kala was founded in the next or iron cycle, after the reactions
to dryness had caused the apex of the delta to retreat far enough upstream to spread
the silts over the previously free loess surface. And the many better-preserved
sites mark the later stage of recuperating climate which carried the delta again
to the north, or at least extended its alluvions farther downstream. The wide
distribution of these later sites indicates a period of prosperity and extent of popu-
lation that seems to have required a much more abundant supply of water than
could be derived now from the river Murg-ab. This view would seem to be fully
confirmed by Mr. Huntington's observations on the Merv Oasis in this volume,
where he gives the evidence towards showing a shrinkage of the water-supply
within the last centuries. The era of prosperity preceding the present great
decline coincided closely with the period of abundant water-supply in Persia,
which Mr. Huntington, in our previous volume, after an analysis of the historical
data in the light of his own extended physiographic investigations in Asia, states
must include the time of both Alexander, 300 B. C., and Istakri, 900 A. D.

Lastly, while observations show that the surface of landlocked seas, like the
Aral and Balkash, are subject to negative and positive movements of short cyclical
character, there is evidence, both historical and in the traditions of natives, that
there has been during our era, a very considerable lowering of the surface of these
waters. This is confirmed by a comparison of maps of the 18th century with those
of to-day, which show a shrinkage of thousands of square miles of area in the Aral
and Balkash, and the total drying up of many smaller bodies of water.

Turning now to plate 5, we find that the evidence offered in the parallel
sequence of physical and human history is all in the direction of confirmation
of the hypothesis of recurrent climatic changes, in which the deepenings of our
valley in the zone of tilting were due to periods of diminished volume of water.
The two kurgans were founded early during aggradings. The iron-culture settle-