158 



NATURE 



[April 7, 1910 



It would be tempting to seek the origins of the Baby- 

 lonian and Elamite cultures in the highlands of Asia, 

 for it is not difficult to assign causes for a succession 

 of migrations westward. The nomad population of 

 Central Asia, swollen to the limit of the supporting 

 capacity of its pasture lands, would be forced to seek 

 outlets into more favoured regions. This process may 

 well . have been accelerated by periods of drought, 

 due to the climatic changes which have left no un- 

 certain traces behind them in the character of the 

 country itself. The present condition of aridity would 

 appear to have been of continual growth, with certain 

 oscillations, since the Glacial period. Already in 

 prehistoric times the seas of sand-dunes had en- 



FiG. 2.— Designs on painted potsherds from the Neolithic and Aeneolithic 

 Strata (Cultures I. and II.) at Anau, which bear a certain resemblance 

 to linear and geometric designs on sherds from Elam and Western Asia. 

 From the North Kurgan. 



croached upon the fertile plains of loess, and the 

 delta-oases, at the mouths of streams emerging from 

 the mountains, or at points where larger rivers lost 

 themselves on the surface of the plains, have been 

 the favourite home of man. It was at one of these, 

 at Anau, near Askhabad, some three hundred miles 

 east of the Caspian, that the Pumpelly expedition 

 conducted excavations in 1904, and obtained its 

 principal material for archaeological study. 



Near the middle of the Anau oasis, and about a 

 mile from one another, are the two Kurgans, hills 

 with rounded contours, rising some forty and fifty 

 NO. 21 10, VOL. 83] 



feet above the plain, and marking the sites of long- 

 forgotten cities. The structure of the North Kurgan 

 had already been exposed by a trench cut in it some 

 twenty-five years ago by General Komorof, which 

 showed a series of stratified remains, including the 

 bones of animals and potsherds of plain and painted 

 ware. It was this trench which first directed Mr. 

 Pumpelly 's attention to the mound, and his subse- 

 quent excavations, both here and in the South 

 Kurgan, laid bare a stratified structure of precisely 

 similar character. The strata represented successive 

 occupations of the sites, and, as their inhabitants 

 lived in houses built of sun-dried brick, the hills 

 gradually rose in height by the accumulation of 

 dibris from previous settlements. Of the two hills, 

 the North Kurgan was of earliest formation, its 

 earlier strata representing a Stone-age culture, while 

 its upper layers belong to an zeneolithic stage of 

 civilisation. The third culture, that of the South 

 Kurgan, dates from a Copper age. The archaeo- 

 logical part of the work was left wholly to Dr. 

 Schmidt, assisted by Miss Brooks, and to his admir- 

 able method of noting the precise spot and level of 

 every object recovered we owe the possibility of 

 tracing the gradual development of culture during the 

 successive periods of settlement. Moreover, the 

 Transcaspian Railway passes little more than half a 

 mile to the north of the North Kurgan, so that no 

 difficulty and little risk were involved in the convey- 

 ance to Europe of all the archaeological material 

 obtained. The collection of animal bones from the 

 North Kurgan alone weighed nearly half a ton, but 

 the neighbourhood of the railway enabled the whole 

 collection to be transported without trouble to Dr. 

 Duerst, of Zurich, who contributes a report on them 

 as part vi. in the second volume. 



The cultural progress of the three great periods is 

 most clearly revealed by the pottery, which exhibits 

 a gradual evolution in form, technique, and decora- 

 tion. Although the vessels of the first two cultures 

 are hand-made, and the wheel was not introduced 

 until the advent of the Copper age, yet the vessels of 

 both earlier epochs are excellent ceramic productions. 

 It would be out of place in the present review to dis- 

 cuss in detail the problems presented by a study of 

 the potsherds, so admirably edited by Dr. Schmidt ; 

 but it may be noted that many of the geometric 

 designs occurring on pottery of the earlier periods 

 from North Kurgan bear a striking resemblance to 

 designs on pottery found by MM. Gautier and 

 Lampre at Mussian, and by M. de Morgan at Susa. 

 This may well point to some connection between the 

 stone and early metal-using cultures of Transcaspia 

 and Elam, while the baked clay figurines from the 

 copper culture of South Kurgan may be due to some 

 early cultural contact with Babylonia, as first sug- 

 gested by Prof. Sayce. Whether we may treat as 

 significant a further resemblance which has recently 

 been pointed out by Mr. H. R. Hall between the 

 Persian and Transcaspian sherds, on the one side,' and 

 fragments of similar geometric pottery on sites in 

 Asia Minor and even in Northern Greece, is a subject 

 outside the scope of the present review. That such 

 problems should be even mooted is a sufficient testi- 

 mony to the importance of the archaeological material 

 obtained by the Pumpelly expedition. 



In fact, Mr, Pumpelly, though not an archseologist 

 himself, has, with Dr. Schmidt's valuable cooperation, 

 produced a work of the first importance to students 

 of archasology. In the first five chapters of part i. 

 of the first volume he has admirably summarised 

 the results obtained by the expedition, but there is 

 one feature of his treatment to which we feel we 



