DESERTS. 293 
are drowned by the present level. This reasoning is enforced by Walthers’s state- 
ment that in a well-boring on the Caspian shore, southeast of Krasnovodsk, dune- 
sand was penetrated to a depth of 35 meters below the sea-level. 
Therefore, a long interval of subaerial erosion elapsed after the Caspian had 
shrunken from its great Pliocene Aralo-Caspian expanse to below its present level, 
and before it rose to its higher Quaternary shores. Assuming that it expanded 
from this low level, called early Quaternary by Davis, to unite again with the Aral 
and transgress the Kara Kum, we have an early Quaternary cycle of desiccation 






MAP OF 
THE ANCIENT COURSE 
OF THE 
OXUS (AMOU-DARIA) 
RC WSs . and the several phases 
Sh ¥; SAQws \ of the recession of the 
os : ARALO-CASPIAN SEA 
ISEKe . from the beginning of the 
quaternary epoch to the present, 
50 100 200 









of VOus -iourt 
D | 
e 





Scale of Kilometers 
Lonzitude of Poulkova (27°58’ W.Paris) 42 


. | \ 
Puits/Teherychly Nee 
y Wess. 
i 








Plateau of the | 
Kara-Koum 
| 
SATS 
SS 


| 
| a . Ziandin 


Pehardjoui 
] aa] 
ON ial / -\- ¢Bourdalik 
; v4 O\\_ | 
[| J ofuitsiouten-aat | “>. 
Eletan 
3 
Soultan-bent 








RS Ancient limits of the Aralo-Caspian Basin bas @S¢rask 
at the beginning of the quaternary period. t 
KS QQ Limit of the Aralo-Caspian Basin 
during the quaternary period. 

PON Limits of the Caspian Sea and of the Aralo-Sarykamych Sea bP 
Bes at the beginning of the present period. i / 2 Pende 
32 
o.. 2 27 28 29 




33 


After Konshin 
Fig. 467.—Map of the Aralo-Caspian Expansions (Konshin). 
as distinct from the Pliocene. During this it appears to have fallen to lower and 
lower shores till but a narrow connection existed between the Aral and Caspian 
through the Sari Kamish Basin. In the course of desiccation both seas shrank 
till this connection became an overflow of the Aral through the Usboi channel 
to the Caspian, which is probably an historic stage. 
Davis’s recognition that “the Quaternary sea resulted from an expansion 
of a smaller early-Quaternary sea, to which the waters had shrunk from their 
great Pliocene extension,’ becomes of importance in that it demonstrates a pre- 
glacial aridity more pronounced than that of to-day. And if we place the great 
