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

CHAPTER XIV.—DESERTS.

As the earliest traces of man in Central Asia show him living in oases, as he
does to-day, the archeology of that region is centered on a study of the oases of
antiquity, and this study must include surrounding deserts, for climatic and
topographic changes have been everywhere so pronounced and have left records
so intimately interwoven with the records of man that no comprehensive search
into the conditions of his past life in Central Asia can be undertaken without some
fundamental ideas about the cause and effect of desert changes.

For our purpose a map of Asia should be regarded as no more than a passing
picture of a struggle between land and sea, and mountains and storms—but one
phase in the evolution of a continent. And it is not only the archæologist and
physiographer or those who probe into the remote past who must assume this
dynamic point of view. The pace of continental change is so fast that a man in
his lifetime can watch the trend of great events, the change of great features, and
know that hardly a branch of human affairs exists but must feel the effect.

THE DESERT BASIN AS AN ORGANIC WHOLE.

Already in early Pliocene time Asia in her immensity had developed a vast
interior region of desert basins, into which were spread the wastes of then large
existing mountain masses, the cores of which still remain as worn-down granites
of the Tian Shan, Pamir, and Tibet. When treated as an organic whole a desert
basin forms one of the most interesting features of our planet, and the laws of
Nature, under which its oases are controlled, must be of vital interest to man.

THE ESSENTIAL CHARACTERS OF A DESERT BASIN.

For our purpose this organic whole includes the area that drains thereto and
may be divided into two parts—the inclosing mountains, ever worn into new
relief by the storms of geologic time, and the plains they have created by the slow
building, layer on layer, of their débris brought down by the waters and winds
of those storms. The first requisite of a desert basin is aridity, sparsity of vegeta-
tion, and too little rainfall to carry the products of erosion away to the ocean.
From the beginning of its definition as a desert basin self-contained, or hydro-
graphically isolated from the ocean, each basin was destined to accumulate on
its plains the débris of erosion sent from its inclosing ranges, and the inevitable
sinking of the earth's crust that yielded as that load increased to a thickness of
many thousand feet appears to have resulted in a corresponding upward displace-
ment of its border ranges. How long this great process has been in operation may
be conjectured from the immensity of beds of fine red desert strata that reach a
thickness of many thousand feet where exposed on the uptilted borders of the
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