RECONNAISSANCE IN TURKESTAN 283 



In Persia, M. J. de Morgan has for several years been conducting 

 a thoroughly scientific investigation at several points, and especially 

 at Susa, where he has already obtained results of the greatest inter- 

 est. The acropolis of Susa is 105 feet high. M. de Morgan's pre- 

 liminary tunnels, run into the hill at different levels, showed it to 

 be composed of made earth from the base upward. Stone imple- 

 ments and pottery abounded up to 36 feet from the top. The 

 pottery improved from below up, and among the fragments he rec- 

 ognized a variety belonging to a group peculiar to Egypt, Syria, 

 Cyprus, and most of Asia Minor, but not known from Mesopotamia. 

 De Morgan had found this in predynastic tombs in Egypt, and 

 ascribed it to a period before the eightieth century B. C. At 45 

 feet below the top he found tablets and cylinders with hieroglyphic 

 inscriptions which Scheil considers as belonging before the fortieth 

 century B. C. 



M. de Morgan asks: "If the refined civilizations of the past 

 6,000 years, with their great structures and fortifications, have left 

 only 45 feet of debris, how many centuries must it have required 

 to accumulate the lower 60 feet when man used more simple mate- 

 rials in the construction of his abodes ? ' ' 



East of Russian Turkestan excavations have been recentlj^ made 

 by Stein in some cities in the Tarim basin, which we know from 

 Chinese history were buried by sand in the early centuries of our era. 



The thickness of made earth in the tumuli and town sites of 

 Turkestan is sufficient to give reason for expecting evidences of 

 very long continued occupation. The drjmessof the climate makes 

 possible the preservation of any traces of written or incised docu- 

 ments that may have existed. Excavation conducted with the idea 

 that everything met with — the earth itself, the character, position, 

 and association of fragments — is part of history, cannot fail to be 

 most fruitful in results. 



It was in all probability from Turkestan that the earliest products 

 of metallurgy in bronze and iron successively progressed to the 

 western world — a progress that in each case carried with it a revo- 

 lution in civilizations. We do not know whether this region saw 

 the birth of the metallurgy of those elemental substances which, 

 beginning with copper and tin and progressing through bronze to 

 iron and steel and the use of coal, marks the birth of civilization 

 and its great revolutions. If it was not the birthplace of this art, 

 and if it was a distributing center, it is a long step nearer to the 

 source, whether this was China, East Turkestan, or India. 



