646 R. PUMPELLY EVOLUTION OF OASES AND CIVILIZATIONS 



mountains, or where larger rivers died out on the plains or entered the 

 shrunken seas. 



The Kurgans Excavated in 1904 



The delta oases have been the home of man from early prehistoric 

 time till now, throughout Turkestan and northern Persia. It was on one 

 of these, at Anau near Askabad, 300 miles east of the Caspian, that I 

 made in 1904 the excavations and physiographic studies, some results of 

 which are the subject of this address. In the center of the delta oasis 

 stand two hills, a half a mile apart, and the ruined city of Anau one 

 mile from both. 



These hills, or kurgans, consist of layers, the remains of human occu- 

 pation — culture strata, we call them — that have accumulated during 

 thousands of years of habitation. 



They are the time-wasted, wind-and-water-carved remnants of long- 

 forgotten cities. Together with the neighboring ruined citadel, they 

 represent an almost continuous series of successive cultures whose local 

 beginnings seem to antedate the dynastic remains of Egypt. 



My shafts showed that these culture strata extend to a depth of 20, 

 and in some cases to 28, feet below the level of the plain which has 

 grown up around them. 



Our excavations showed that the northern kurgan, which is 60 feet 

 high from its base below the plain, is the older, and that the southern 

 kurgan was not started till after the abandonment of the northern one ; 

 it has now a height of 72 feet above its base; and after this was aban- 

 doned the city of Anau started, and lasted till the middle of the last 

 century, having grown to a height of 38 feet, of which 15 feet are below 

 the level of the plain. 



To try to find out why two kurgans, starting thousands of years apart, 

 should have been buried to the same depth, I sank a series of over 20 

 shafts, both through the heart of the hills and on the plain. 



I have time to give only such brief statements of the interesting re- 

 sults obtained from these shafts as bear directly on the subject in hand. 



Culture Succession 



To aid in this brief description of these ancient sites from an arche- 

 ological standpoint, I have represented the leading results on the 

 diagram shown in figure 2. There are present six successive cultures 

 of distinct populations, giving a section from the present time down 

 through the historic, the iron and copper stages, into the Stone age. 



