NO. 13 SOVIET ANTHROPOLOGY — FIELD I65 



of its inhabitants, writes : "There arc no gold or silves ores here, nor 

 precious stones. The people are rich solely because of the commerce 

 with the Turks . . . the large city of Al-Dzhurdzhania on the 

 southern shore of the Dzheikhun River [the Amu] is the main trading 

 place for the Guzes." 



( Xsjumin docs not believe mestization by marriage wtjuld take place 

 t(j any marked degree between settled agricultural people and the 

 nomads. There are no indications that there was mestization with 

 the Turkish troops inside the oases at that early date, although there 

 are definite indications of such mestization at a much later date 

 through captured slaves. 



lahnologists and historians identify the (iuzcs with the Turkomans 

 for the followng reasons: 



1. This is indicated by such trustworthy traits as the cephalic index. 



2. A thousand years ago Turkomans were as dolichocephalic as 

 they are now. 



3. We must conclude that at one time the settled populations of 

 the Khwarazmian Oasis had a much larger admixture of Turkomans 

 than it does now. However, we have no factual data to explain this. 



Tentative explanations include the fact that during the eleventh 

 century the Guzes went farther south, to Persia. They started com- 

 merce in Persian captives from Khurasan, who were better slaves 

 tlian the Turkomans and also had farther to go in order to escape. 

 This custom of recruiting Persian slaves continued after the Turkish 

 conquest. During the Russian conquest of Khwarazm in 1873, 

 thousands of Persian slaves were discovered. The descendants of 

 these slaves still live in Khwarazm and are called kul (slaves). 



There are no indications that Turkomans practice artificial cranial 

 deformation to elongate their heads. The use of the cradle, which was 

 borrowed by the Turkomans from the Sarts, could only flatten the 

 occiput and not elongate the head. 



In order to exclude the possibility of "secondary" elements, the 

 Turkomans are compared with their neighbors, the Khurasanians, 

 who during many centuries were subjected to Turkoman invasions. 

 They called them ".\Iaman"; many became slaves of Turkoman 

 families. 



Masalskii states that in the course of only one century, at least one 

 million Khurasanians were enslaved by the Turkomans. lAvorskii 

 adds that until the Russian inva.sion all the field lalxir in Turkmenistan 

 was performed by Persian slaves, while Turkomans engaged in no- 

 madic pursuits. Masalskii also explains the purity of the Indo-Euro- 

 pean traits among the southern (Teke) Turkomans bv mestization 



