The Supposed Birthplace of Civilization 501 



From. Wm. M. Davis, Carnegie Institution 



A Mosque of Mediaeval Samarkand 



The ruins of Samarkand are very extensive. Its position must have made it an important 

 center for commerce and wealth probably throughout the whole period of prehistoric occupa- 

 tion, as it has been during historic times. Situated in the heart of the very fertile oasis of the 

 Zerafshan River, it lies also on the most open and easiest caravan routes connecting China and 

 eastern Turkestan with Afghanistan, India, and Persia. Samarkand has, even within the past 

 two thousand years, been sacked, destroyed, and rebuilt many times. L,ike Merv, its rebuild- 

 ings have often been on adjoining sites, and the determining of the whole area covered by these 

 various sites remains to be made. There is evidence that it is very extensive. 



As in all Turkestan, so at Samarkand, the older structures still standing are those of the 

 Mohammedan period. The many immense and wonderfully decorated mosques built by 

 Tamerlane, though now falling into ruin, belong among the wonders of the world ; and this 

 not only on account of their great size, but also because of the beauty of their decoration. 

 Seen from Afrosiab, these ruins tower high above the rich foliage of the oasis city — evidence 

 of the wealth of treasure that Tamerlane had accumulated in Turkestan within two centuries 

 after Genghis Khan had sacked the country and massacred much of the population. 



test between the Turanian and Aryan 

 stocks ; but its problems, both physical 

 and archeological, arepartsof the greater 

 problem underlying the study of the de- 

 velopment of man and his civilization on 

 the great continent and of the environ- 

 ment conditioning that development. 



The many fragmentary peoples sur- 

 viving in the remote corners and in the 

 protected mountain fastnesses of Asia, 

 preserving different languages, arts, and 

 customs, indicate a very remote period 



of differentiation, with subsequent long 

 periods for separate development. They 

 point also to the long periods of unrest 

 and battling in which the survivors of 

 the vanquished were forced into their 

 present refuges. And this unrest was 

 probably the remote prototype of that 

 which in the later prehistoric and his- 

 toric time sent out its waves from the 

 Aralo- Caspian basin. It was probably 

 from the beginning a condition in which 

 the slowly progressive change toward 



