National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

SOUTH KURGAN IRON CULTURE.

After an apparently long period of abandonment, the
South Kurgan was again occupied, when a new cycle of
aggrading was again filling the valley, by a people having
an iron culture, during which at least 12 feet of culture-
strata accumulated.

ANAU CITY.

After the abandonment of the South Kurgan, and at a
time when the valley filling had progressed to a height at
which the natural process of alluviation was superseded by
the present system of artificial irrigation, the city of Anau
was founded, early in our era, and, after accumulating 5
feet of culture-strata characterized by a red pottery, there
appeared a greenish variety and a glazed and enameled
and painted ware. In the middle of the fifteenth century,
its large and beautiful mosque was founded, and in the
middle of the nineteenth century the city was abandoned
and became a ruin.

Such is the main outline of the most essential observed
data on which the argument relating to the chronology of
the assumedly interdependent physical and human history
of the oasis of Anau is based, and which is assumed in its
physical aspects and as regards the fundamental character-
istics of the cultures to be regional in its applicability.

As regards uncertainties in the platting of the physical
data, while the unbroken line representing the aggrading
during the copper culture is drawn exactly where it belongs,
the point where the first aggrading ends and where the cut-
ting-down begins may belong opposite a point 12 feet either
way on the scale of feet on the culture scale. The gap
between the copper and iron cultures is based partly on
archeological and partly on geological requirements affecting
the rate of cutting-down; it may be wider, but may not well
be much smaller. There is little doubt that a gap should
show on the plate between North and South Kurgans, but
in the absence of any means of estimating it, even proxi-
mately, I have preferred to leave it unrepresented.

THE ASKHABAD WELL.

I can not leave this part of the discussion without refer-
ring again to the Askhabad Well. As stated above, this
extends to a depth of 2,200 feet, and its bottom is still in
delta sediments more than 1,400 feet below the level of the
ocean. When we remember that the sinking of the zone of
deposition is a geodynamic process due to the gravity of the
secular accumulation of thin layers of alluvium, we realize