XXVI PREFACE. 
Up to this time I had done practically no reading in connection with the 
subject and was ignorant of the amount of thought and effort that during 
forty years had been devoted to Central Asia. The Russian General Staff 
had covered an immense area with good topographic surveys, and the 
Imperial Geological Survey had already mapped the geology in considerable 
detail. And I found that the so-called “Aryan problem’ was no longer 
the simple hypothesis of the school of Max Miiller and Lassen; it had become 
a hotbed of controversy in which, as a result of speculative activity, from 
the original linguistic seed had arisen a surprising variety of forms, into the 
analysis of which entered linguistic, anthropological, historical, and geo- 
graphical considerations without number. 
In St. Petersburg my plans were facilitated in the most generous man- 
ner by individual men of science, by the Imperial Academy of Sciences 
and the Geological Survey, by the ministers of War and Agriculture, and 
by Prince Hilkof, Minister of Ways and Communications. So thoroughly 
was this aid planned and executed that throughout our travels and work in 
1903 and 1904 the different members of the expeditions met uniformly with 
the most open hospitality and the most cordial assistance. 
The reconnaissance expedition of 1903 consisted of Professor Davis, 
with Mr. Ellsworth Huntington as his assistant, my son Raphael Welles 
Pumpelly, and myself. We remained together through Southern Turke- 
stan, as far as Tashkent; separating there, Mr. Davis and Mr. Huntington, 
at first together and later separately, took in the regions of Issikul, and the 
Western Tian Shan Mountains from Kashgar to Lake Balkash, while my son 
and I examined the country from the Syr-darya to the heights of the Pamir. 
During the following winter Mr. Huntington made observations in Sistan 
on the Persian-Afghan frontier and in northeastern Persia. In the various 
reconnaissances there was accumulated a great amount of information bear- 
ing directly on the objective points of the investigation and forming the 
subject-matter of the volume published in 1905.* In their respective areas 
Messrs. Davis, Huntington, and R. W. Pumpelly established independently 
positive proofs of at least three distinct glacial and interglacial epochs of the 
glacial period and obtained abundant evidence of the deep-reaching reaction 
of these upon the topography of the mountains and plains. 
We were also able to appreciate highly the work of the Russian geolo- 
gists—to mention only Tschernyscheff, Karpinski, Muschketof, Bogdano- 
vitch, Andrusof, and Nikitin in the pre-quaternary geology of Turkestan. 
Both this and the careful work of Andrusof and Sjogren on the east and 
west shores of the Caspian, and of Konshin in delineating phases of the 
expansions of the Aralo-Caspian—the accuracy of which we were able to 

*Explorations in Turkestan, with an account of Eastern Persia and Sistan. Expedition of 1903 under 
the direction of Raphael Pumpelly. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication No. 26, 1905. 
