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

scanty pasturage. It is no wonder, therefore, that the Turkoman cattle are
unusually small and yield very little milk. How entirely different from the animal
breeding of to-day in that region was that which the bone-remains of ancient
Anau indicate!

At the time when the lowest layers of the North Kurgan at Anau were formed
man lived in this region entirely without domestic animals. The mighty wild ox
(*Bos namadicus* Falconer & Cautley), and the small wild horse—possibly in the
form that Wilckens thought he discovered among the finds of Maragha in Persia,
or in that of *Equus przewalskii*—roamed on the steppes and the oases of the Kara
Kum desert and sought shelter in the forest which probably then occupied the
valleys and slopes of the Kopet Dagh. There lived, too, the large-horned wild
sheep (*Ovis vignei arkal* Lydekker) and the gazelle (*Gazella subgutturosa* Guel-
denstedt).

From the absence of all stone weapons in the oldest period, we may conclude
that man lived on a friendly footing with these animals and that he could gain
possession of them only by depriving the wolves of their prey or by the use of
fire-hardened wooden weapons. The absence of weapons among the primitive
Anau-li presents an actual condition such as that which forms the basis of the very
plausible theory of the domestication advanced by R. Mucke.* It would be guess-
work to attempt to picture the method of domestication, and to assume with
Mucke that the wild horse, the wild sheep, and the wild ox voluntarily (or compelled
by the necessity of food from outside the oasis) approached human dwellings to
graze on the weeds and other plants and so were gradually brought into compan-
ionship with man, who then assumed the care of their nourishment. We know
only that after the accumulation of the lowest 10 feet of the strata in the North
Kurgan this same ox occurs in an almost equally large, but certainly a domesti-
cated form, becoming more and more frequent in the higher strata, when the horse
and the sheep also pass over into the domesticated condition. It seems probable,
however, that little use was made of the milk of the cattle and that they were
used for riding and as working animals, as is the case to-day.

In the −8-foot layer, *i. e.*, 12 feet from the bottom, there appears the pig,
of which we had no trace in the lower layers. Was it a domesticated pig or the
wild *Sus vittatus*? This can not be determined with certainty. In any event it
was the same animal, and the breeding of swine was actively followed by the
Anau-li into the metal period, whereas at present it is entirely wanting among the
Mohammedan population.

In this remote period also the breeding of sheep, which to-day forms the
principal part of the Turkoman's animal industry, began to be developed. The
first remains of the domesticated sheep that we find point to an unusually heavy
and stout-horned form, which, in the earlier layers, is very closely related to the
wild sheep of the Kopet Dagh. Gradually the horns of this sheep became smaller
and smaller and there arose that form which has been designated as "turbary