国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

> > > >
カラー New!IIIFカラー高解像度 白黒高解像度 PDF   日本語 English
0075 On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1
中央アジア踏査記 : vol.1
On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1 / 75 ページ(カラー画像)

New!引用情報

doi: 10.20676/00000214
引用形式選択: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

OCR読み取り結果

ent on irrigation. Had not conditions of extreme aridity
already prevailed in ancient times, it would be impossible
to account for the survival in almost perfect preservation
of a multitude of objects, very perishable by nature, in
places so exposed as mere refuse heaps outside houses. Ex-
actly corresponding observations are furnished by what
archaeological explorations at other ancient sites of the
Tarim basin have taught us. The climatic conditions of the
periods immediately preceding abandonment must have
been practically as arid as they have been since and are now.
This uniform and important fact has a direct bearing upon
an important and much-discussed geographical question
usually spoken of as that of 'desiccation'. It is too large to
be more than touched upon here. If the climatic conditions
were sixteen centuries ago quite as dry as they are now,
how is it to be explained that cultivation at those two
ancient sites and at others also has since their abandonment
become wholly impossible?
I believe that the explanation as far as the Tarim basin
is concerned is supplied by the diminished volume of the
rivers upon which cultivation is wholly dependent. The
most likely cause of this diminution may be sought in the
shrinkage of the glaciers on the high ranges which mainly
feed those rivers. The shrinkage itself can well be accounted
for by assuming, as has been suggested by Sir Sidney Bur-
rard and Professor Von Ficker, that those glaciers comprise
great reserves of ice which have been left behind by the last
glacial period and have since been undergoing slow but
more or less continuous reduction through milder climatic
conditions. This process of using up what might be called
'fossil ice' would suffice to explain shrinkage in the sources