CLIMATE AND HISTORY. 307 
existing conditions, but it is highly improbable. Ancient Neh is one of many 
places which are hard to understand unless we suppose that some radical change of 
conditions has taken place. 
THE MERV OASIS. 
In this connection two other places farther north in Transcaspia deserve men- 
tion. One of these is the ancient city and oasis of Merv, which I have described 
in a short report which will be published among the archeological reports of the 
Pumpelly Expedition to Turkestan for the year 1904. A study of the distribution 
and extent of the ruins which cover the oasis indicates that in antiquity the extent 
of land under cultivation and the number of inhabitants were not only greater than 
at present, but were greater than would at present be possible, even if all the water 
of the Murg-ab River, which sustains the oasis, were utilized with as much care as 
is employed upon the experiment station of the Imperial Domain. It is difficult to 
account for this unless the water-supply was formerly greater. 
BAI, KUWI AND ANAU. 
The other Transcaspian example is at Anau, near Askhabad. The main features 
of this place, both modem and ancient, will be described in the forthcoming arch- 
eological reports of the Pumpelly Expedition. At Bal Kuwi, in the desert about 10 
miles north-northwest of Anau, lie the ruins of an ancient nnid village. The main 
site consists of a mound perhaps 15 feet high, ver)- broad and flat, and co\-ered with 
bits of pottery. Where not buried in sand-dunes the surface of the mound shows 
the rectangular outlines of houses, the roofs of which have disappeared, while the 
walls have been buried to the top in the pink .sand of the desert, and are thus pre- 
served with their tops flush with the surface. Excavation shows that these houses 
are built without a trace of wood. On the floor of each room is a foot or two of 
loose cla)', half of it in the fonn of sun-dried bricks, which appears to be the debris 
of the roof Apparently the houses were made entirel\- of mud, with domed roofs, 
like those of modem Persia. The total number of houses in the main village may 
be estimated at from 75 to 150, while half a mile away, at Telbeng Berkoh, are 20 
more of the same kind. The date of the mins is unknown, and so far as the style 
of architecture and the kinds of pottery which are found in the houses are concerned, 
they may belong to any epoch within the last two thousand years. The Turkoman 
graj'-beards have no tradition on the subject and merely say that when they came to 
the country fiftj' years ago the ruins presented the same appearance as now. The 
inhabitants of the ruins were probabl}- tillers of the soil, for the houses are per- 
manent structures, and their number, at least 75, is so great that they can hardly have 
been occupied by a ])astoral people. At present there are three wells at Bal Kuwi, 
and 20 families of Turkomans camp there for three months in the spring. They 
say that there is grass enough for nine months, but as it gets dry they move awa}-. 
Even allowing for understatement by the Turkomans, it is hardly probable that 75 
and probably more families could be pennanently supported by flocks in a region 
which the present inhabitants consider only sufficient to support 20 families nine 
months out of each j-ear. If the inhabitants of Bal Kuwi were not pastoral, they 
