TUEKESTAN AND IKANIA 667 



where it is known both to the south of Anan and farther eastward on 

 the plateau. 



Again, the importation I have mentioned, of an already domesticated 

 pig and goat, of which the wild forms exist in India and Persia, indi- 

 cates a relation with at least eastern Persia or Afghanistan; and the 

 possession of domesticated animals on other oases shows that the peoples 

 of other parts of our oasis-world had passed the line that is held by many 

 to mark the transition from barbarism to civilization. 



It is hardly conceivable that, if the peoples of these distant oases had 

 known the art of making, from stone, axes and points for arrows and 

 spears, this knowledge would not have been imported with the turquoise, 

 the pig, and the goat into Anau. 



We have at present no means of knowing how the earliest culture of 

 our settlements at Anau stands in relation to the generalized cultures of 

 central Asia before the segregation into isolated communities, for there 

 have been made no other systematic excavations anywhere to discover 

 traces of the older civilizations. 



The constituents of the earliest culture found at Anau presuppose an 

 evolution during many thousand years. How slow it must have been is 

 shown by the almost unvarying character of its pottery during the two 

 millenniums of its existence at the north kurgan. 



When we compare this culture with the two succeeding and intruding 

 ones, we find both differences and points in common. Each has its own 

 peculiar technique in pottery and scheme of design in painted decoration. 

 All three have in common a rectangular construction of houses of air- 

 dried bricks, with doors swinging on pivot-stones; the same spindle 

 whorls, the same bottomless bake-oven pots, the same mealing stones; 

 and through it all there persists the same custom of burying children 

 under the house floor in a contracted position. The differences are due 

 to independent culture evolution in separate oases of one or of several 

 groups. But the points in common date from an earlier stage in the 

 forming of groups and presuppose beyond doubt a long period of dwell- 

 ing in houses and of knowledge of the potter's art and of spinning, and, 

 if we may judge from the mealing stones, possibly some form, however 

 primitive, of agriculture. 



Of these the peculiar burial custom and the mealing stone probably 

 date from a still earlier and regionally more generalized culture. Per- 

 haps we may say the same of the bottomless bake-oven, for it exists in 

 use today far and wide over Transcaspia and northern and eastern 

 Persia. The earliest acquisitions are often the last to be lost. 



