BULLETIN OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 

 Vol. 17, pp. 637-670 December 31, 1906 



INTERDEPENDENT EVOLUTION OF OASES AND CIVILIZA- 

 TIONS* 



PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS BY RAPHAEL PUMPELLY 



{Read before the Society December 27, 1906) 



CONTENTS 



Page 



Physical development of central Asia 637 



The kurgans excavated in 1904 646 



Culture succession 646 



Relation of the cultures to their environment 649 



Change-producing agencies 652 



Introduction of irrigation 660 



Chronology 661 



Turkestan and Irania a region of independent ethnic and cultural evolu- 

 tion under isolation, dating from preglacial or interglacial time 664 



Origin of agriculture and of organized settled society 668 



Physical Development of central Asia 



The beginnings of central Asia, as part of the Great continent, lie far 

 back in the Tertiary period, during a time when mother Earth was in 

 travail, giving birth to her last-born, the new order of continental and 

 organic forms. In the throes of the contracting terrestrial cnist there 

 had been slowly born great mountain masses, ranges whose ice-capped 

 giants now mark the boundary between north and south, extending half 

 way round the earth, through the Pyrenees, Caucasus, and Himalayas 

 to China. 



The Eurasian continent was born, but in its infancy a great sea ex- 

 tended from the Atlantic through the Mediterranean to southeastern 



*The subject-matter of this address is the outcome of a careful analysis of some of the results 

 of my expedition of 1904, under the auspices of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. 



For the ability to use the pottery of the different cultures as characteristic fossils, I am 

 indebted to the profound knowledge of ceramics of Dr Hubert Schmidt, the archeologist of 

 the expedition. 



In the physiography my son, R. W. Pumpelly, who made the surveys and studied minutely 

 the natural records in the shafts, has contributed not only most of the observed data, but 

 also some of the fundamental deductions. 



LVIII — Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., Vol. 17, 1905 (637) 



