ARCHEOLOGICAL AND PHYSICO-GEOGRAPHICAL 

 RECONNAISSANCE IN TURKESTAN 



Report by Raphael Pumpelly. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

 Itinerary 272 



Outline sketch of the region 274 



Evidences of former occupation 276 



Tumuli 277 



Ancient towns 278 



Review of the field 281 



Recommendations 284 



Results in physical geography 285 



Summary 287 



At the end of 1902 the Carnegie Institution voted a grant to me 

 " for the purpose of making, during the year 1903, a prehminary 

 examination of the Trans- Caspian region, and of collecting and 

 arranging all available existing information necessary in organizing 

 the further investigation of the past and present physico-geograph- 

 ical conditions and archeological remains of the region." 



The investigation was proposed because (i) there is a growing 

 belief that central Asia was the region in which the great civiliza- 

 tions of the far East and of the West had their origins; and (2) 

 because of the supposed occurrence in that region, in prehistoric 

 times, of great changes in climate, resulting in the formation and 

 recession of an extensive Asian Mediterranean, of which the Aral, 

 Caspian, and Black seas are the principal remnants. 



It had long seemed to me that a study of Central- Asian archeology 

 would probably yield important evidence in the genealogy of the 

 great civilizations and of at least several of the dominant races, and 

 that a parallel study of the traces of physical changes during Qua- 

 ternary time might show some coincidence between the phases of 

 social evolution and the changes in environment; further, that it 

 might be possible to correlate the physical and human records and 

 thus furnish a contribution to the time scale of recent geology . 



(271) 



