186 THE ARCHEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS IN ANAU. 
the Homeric poets, one of them (Il. v, 393; XI, 507) having called the bronze arrow- 
heads tpcyAdyey (cf. Helbig, Homer. Epos, 2d. ed., p. 341). On the other hand, this 
form is still unknown in the Mycenean sphere. For us, therefore, the three-edged 
arrow-point of Anau may indicate a post-Mycenean epoch. Here, too, iron 
appears for the first time. Among the other finds from the upper strata of the 
South Kurgan nothing is contradictory to the first half of the first millennium 
B.c. We may, therefore, date the culture IV approximately 1000 to 500 B.C. 
How far back we can go beyond the year 500 B. c. will doubtless appear when 
the next younger culture period in the city of Anau shall have been explored. 
Naturally the upper limit is equally uncertain, for we do not know whether 
or not the occupation of the place continued uninterruptedly. Since the burial 
of child skeletons is lacking in the upper culture-strata of the South Kurgan, we 
should perhaps assume certain disturbances in the continuity of development. 
In any event, the round date 1000 B. ¢c. must be set as the terminus ante quem for 
culture III, and on account of its long continuance we must imagine its brilliant 
period to have been in at least the second half of the II millennium B. c. This 
practically corresponds to the flourishing period of the Mycenean culture. Indeed 
the engraved stone points to an earlier time. ‘The agreements with the A/jgean 
sphere in this way find chronological support. How far back the beginning of 
the culture reaches we have naturally at present no means of determining. 
The cultures of the North Kurgan must be still older. More exact deter- 
minations are not possible, since datable objects are wanting which might be 
compared with the finds of other spheres. For culture II, however, we obtain 
approximately the first half of the second millennium B. c.; and for the oldest 
culture (I) 2000 B. ¢. as a rough date will certainly not be too high. We will have 
to imagine the beginnings of the settlement of Anau as having taken place in the 
III millennium B. c. 
Generally speaking, therefore, the absolute chronology of the four culture 
epochs of prehistoric Anau stands still on a very weak basis; but the finds hitherto 
made lead us to expect still better data for its further consideration.* 

*In these conservatively suggested datings Dr. Schmidt is guided by the presence or absence of Euro- 
pean and Mediterranean analogies among the finds, together perhaps with an unexpressed inclination to 
seek western origins for the cultures. 
The reader who has examined the arguments stated in chapters m1, Iv, and v will see that they are 
based—1st, on evidence advanced to show that the early cultures of Transcaspia were not only of Central- 
Asian origin, but that they contributed to the cultures of neolithic Europe and of early Babylonia; 2d, on 
the determination of a law of proximate uniformity of stratigraphic growth of city mounds in dry climates in 
the absence of the use of stone and burnt brick in construction, and on the determination of the rate of this 
growth in Anau checked by that in Egyptian mounds; 3d, on the finds, both the artificial objects studied 
by Dr. Schmidt and the bones of animals which supplied the material for the brilliant discoveries of Dr. 
Duerst; 4th, on the confirmatory evidence of cyclical climatic changes, which in turn are found to agree 
with Dr. Duerst’s independent conclusions, based on the progressive changes in size, etc., of the domesti- 
cated animals. 
But most of these elements of the argument could not have been established without the fundamental 
and scientifically planned work of Dr. Schmidt. It is to this that we owe the knowledge of the exact strati- 
graphic position of every artificial object and every bone, while to his knowledge of ceramics we owe the 
ability to use the fragments of pottery, as the geologist uses fossils, in determining the culture periods 
of the successive alluviations which mark the favorable parts of the climatic cycles.—R. P. 
a 
