- In Ruin, Symbols on a Stone Hint at a Lost Asian Culture
-
Culture/Society News
Source: The New York Times
Published: May 13, 2001 Author: JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Posted on 05/12/2001 11:44:35 PDT by sarcasm
n an unexpected benefit of the cold war's end, Russian and American archaeologists say they have discovered an ancient civilization that thrived in Central Asia more than 4,000 years ago, before being lost in the sweep of history.
The people of this area, the archaeologists say, built oasis settlements with imposing mud-brick buildings and fortifications. They herded sheep and goats and grew wheat and barley in irrigated fields. They had bronze axes, fine ceramics, alabaster and bone carvings and jewelry of gold and semiprecious stones. They left luxury goods in the graves of an elite class.
The accomplishments of these unknown people in what are now the republics of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan began to emerge over several decades of excavations by archaeologists of the Soviet Union, who worked diligently but in academic silence behind closed borders. The surprising scope of society suggested a stage of social and economic development generally regarded as civilization. All that seemed lacking was evidence of number or writing systems.
With the end of the cold war, American archaeologists have joined the Russians in exploring the region, and now they are reporting that they have found inscriptions showing that these people may have indeed had writing, or at least were experimenting with a form of proto- writing around 2300 B.C.
"We are rewriting all the history books about the ancient world because of the new political order in our own time," Dr. Fredrik T. Hiebert, a University of Pennsylvania archaeologist involved in the excavation, said in an interview last week.
In the most recent and provocative discovery, Dr. Hiebert uncovered a small stone object engraved with four or five red-colored symbols or letters that apparently bear no resemblance to any other writing system of the time. Other scholars agreed that the symbols seemed to be unlike contemporary scripts in Mesopotamia, Iran or the Indus River valley.
Dr. Hiebert made the discovery last summer in ruins at Annau, a site near the border with Iran and only eight miles from the Turkmenistan capital, Ashgabat. He described the findings a week ago at a symposium at Penn and yesterday at a conference on language and archaeology at Harvard.
"You can say we have discovered a new ancient civilization," Dr. Hiebert said. At the same time, the pyramids of Egypt had been standing for three centuries, power in the Tigris and Euphrates valley was shifting from Sumer to Babylon and the Chinese had yet to develop writing.
Dr. Victor H. Mair, a specialist in ancient Asian languages and cultures at Penn, who was not on the research team, said of the inscription, "I definitely think that's writing."
Dr. Mair added that the discovery of ruins of an advanced culture in a region "where there was thought to be just space and emptiness fills an enormous gap" in terms of trade and cultural exchange across Asia in antiquity. It thus suggested that people in Asia more than 4,000 years ago were not as isolated as once supposed, he said, but probably had continentwide connections.
The dozens of settlement ruins of the newfound civilization stretch east from Annau across the Kara- Kum desert into Uzbekistan and perhaps the northern part of Afghanistan. It is an area 300 to 400 miles long and 50 miles wide. Since no one knows who the people were or what they called themselves, archaeologists have given the culture the prosaic name of the Bactria Margiana Archaeology Complex, or BMAC (pronounced BEE-mack), after the ancient Greek names of two regions it encompasses.
Long after the ruins were buried in sand, the area was traversed by the legendary Silk Road, the caravan route linking China and the Mediterranean lands from the second century B.C. to the 16th century A.D. The oases that served as way stations for rest and resupply on the Silk Road also supported the BMAC civilization, which presumably was trading far and wide over some kind of ancestral Bronze Age Silk Road.
Dr. Carl Lambert-Karlovsky, a Harvard archaeologist, questioned whether the symbols on the artifact represented true writing. But he said that Dr. Hiebert's discovery "falls into place with other research showing that this culture was working out some sort of communication system, though it never reached the level of complexity in writing as its neighbors did."
Until the waning days of the Soviet Union, foreign scholars knew almost nothing of the nature and extent of the BMAC culture. Reports of findings were confined to Soviet journals.
In the post-cold-war openness, Russian archaeologists are eagerly sharing their knowledge and inviting collaboration with Westerners. Dr. Hiebert plans to return to Annau, possibly next month, for further excavations to be financed in part by the National Geographic Society.
Dr. Victor Sarianidi of the Institute of Archaeology in Moscow found a distinctive architectural pattern in many of the ruins. The buildings at each site appeared to be erected in one burst of construction according to the design of a single architect. The largest buildings were like huge apartment complexes, each bigger than a football field and divided into dozens and dozens of rooms. They were surrounded by multiple mud- brick walls, some as much as 10 feet thick. Beyond lay traces of agricultural fields.
In the 1990's, Dr. Hiebert began digging slowly to deeper and thus earlier levels of occupation. He was rewarded last June while excavating beneath a room in what appeared to be an administrative building at Annau. This was where he found the carved symbols on a piece of shiny black jet stone, a type of coal, less than one inch to a side.
Archaeologists believe that it was a stamp seal, commonly used in ancient commerce to mark containers by their contents and ownership. The site also contained many lumps of clay that were used to seal vessels or parcels.
Scientists analyzing charcoal found with the artifacts dated the material at 2300 B.C., before the larger settlements were built. American radiocarbon dates have established that the BMAC culture was present in Central Asia from 2200 B.C. to 1800 or 1700 B.C. Russian research generally underestimated the culture's antiquity by about 500 years.
Back at Penn, Dr. Hiebert showed the symbols to colleagues, and they were stumped. They said the symbols were unlike the Mesopotamian cuneiform script, generally regarded as the earliest writing system, or the proto-Elamite writing on the Iranian plateau.
Dr. Gregory L. Possehl, a specialist in Indus archaeology at Penn, said the artifact's shape was wrong for an Indus stamp seal and only one sign could possibly be construed as related to Indus script.
"It looks as if it is some kind of writing," Dr. Possehl said last week. "It is unique, as far as I can tell."
Dr. Mair assured Dr. Hiebert that the symbols were not Chinese, if the artifact is as early as has been dated. Chinese writing is thought not to have begun until hundreds of years later.
Whatever its origins, Dr. Mair said, the type of symbols and the small number of strokes used to create each one "makes me think the writing system is already fairly abstract, not pictographic."
Dr. Hiebert is not so sure. He cautioned that there was insufficient evidence to determine if this was an evolved writing system, or if these people had become aware of the existence of writing elsewhere and were experimenting on a system of their own. He speculated that the engraved stamp included a prefix symbol, a marker to designate the category of the word to follow, that preceded four symbols for the word or words. These could stand for the name of a commodity and its owner.
The only other example of possible writing by the BMAC people was reported two years ago by Dr. I. S. Klochkov of the Institute of Archaeology in St. Petersburg. He found a pot shard in the ruins at Gonur with what appeared to be four letters of writing in an unknown script and language. Other Russian research has turned up evidence that people of the BMAC culture made notations in pottery and clay.
Scholars have many questions about the new ancient civilization, mainly where did the people come from, what influence did they have on their times and what happened to them?
Dr. Hiebert thinks that the culture emerged near Annau, in the foothills along the Iran-Turkmenistan frontier, where there is evidence of earlier villages. Dr. Sarianidi contends that the culture's roots lie in Turkey. Other scholars point to evidence showing that they might have migrated from the north.
The BMAC culture's decline is equally mysterious. "Why that happens remains unclear," said Dr. Lambert-Kovalsky of Harvard. "The architectural signatures, their fortified buildings, disappear after a few hundred years. Most of the luxury materials disappear. There is a diminution of complexity. Perhaps people revert to smaller settlements, or they leave and are absorbed in other cultures."
But for a while, in a land and a time unsuspected by archaeologists until recently, a civilization flourished and then vanished, leaving crumbling walls of mud brick and some cryptic symbols on a tiny piece of stone.
1 Posted on 05/12/2001 11:44:35 PDT by sarcasm
[ Reply | Private Reply | Top | Last ]
To: blam, sneakypete
FYI
2 Posted on 05/12/2001 11:45:27 PDT by sarcasm[ Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | Top | Last ]
To: sarcasm
Could these people be related to the mummies being dug out of the sand in the Tarim Basin area?
3 Posted on 05/12/2001 12:04:44 PDT by Dan De Quille[ Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | Top | Last ]
To: Dan De Quille
I don't know but I thought of the same thing. There have been a few long threads about ancient population movements.
4 Posted on 05/12/2001 12:18:00 PDT by sarcasm[ Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | Top | Last ]
To: Dan De Quille/Sarcasm
Perhaps, I believe both probably are refugees from the flooding of the Black Sea, Noah's Flood? "Dr. Sarianidi contends that the culture's roots lie in Turkey. Other scholars point to evidence showing that they might have migrated from the north." The root of all Indo-European languages has been traced to Anatolia. The Basque language in Spain/France is the exception.
5 Posted on 05/12/2001 12:32:27 PDT by blam[ Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | Top | Last ]
To: blam
The root of all Indo-European languages has been traced to Anatolia
I didn't know that. I know the Hittites were Indo-Europeans, but I thought that they came from somewhere else.
6 Posted on 05/12/2001 12:36:41 PDT by Dan De Quille[ Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | Top | Last ]
To: Dan De Quille
" Hittite, member of an ancient Indo-European people who appeared in Anatolia at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC; by 1340 BC they had become one of the dominant powers of the Middle East. Probably originating from the area beyond the Black Sea, the Hittites first occupied central Anatolia, making their capital at Hattusa (modern Bogazköy). Early kings of the Hittite Old Kingdom, such as Hattusilis I (reigned c. 1650–c. 1620 BC), consolidated and extended Hittite control over much of Anatolia and northern Syria. Hattusilis' grandson Mursilis I raided down the Euphrates River to Babylon, putting an end (c. 1590 BC) to the Amorite dynasty there. After the death of Mursilis, a dynastic power struggle ensued, with Telipinus finally gaining control about 1530 BC. In the noted Edict of Telipinus, long upheld by succeeding generations, he attempted to end lawlessness and to regulate the royal succession. After Telipinus historical records are scarce until the Hittite New Kingdom, or empire (c. 1400–c. 1200 BC). Under Suppiluliumas I (c. 1380–c. 1346 BC), the empire reached its height. Except for a successful campaign against Arzawa in southwestern Anatolia, Suppiluliumas' military career was devoted to involved struggles with the kingdom of Mitanni to the southeast and to the establishment of a firm Hittite foothold in Syria." The Basque are genetically most related to the Irish and the Welsh.
7 Posted on 05/12/2001 13:05:10 PDT by blam[ Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | Top | Last ]
To: sarcasm
When translated the writing said...
"Will trade campaign contributions to the DNC for weapons advances."
8 Posted on 05/12/2001 13:10:12 PDT by DAnconia55[ Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | Top | Last ]
To: Right Whale
FYI.
9 Posted on 05/12/2001 19:36:59 PDT by blam[ Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | Top | Last ]
To: Lucius Cornelius Sulla/LarryLied/Aristeides/537 Votes
FYI.
10 Posted on 05/12/2001 22:30:06 PDT by blam[ Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | Top | Last ]
To: blam
It sounds like these people might have been related to the Tokharians (sp?) who lived a little later and further northeast, in what is now the westernmost part of China. These people are not known to have had writing, but were either of the late neolithic or early bronze age. They were the northeastern most known branch of the Indo-Europeans, and appear to have been absorbed/destroyed by the Mongolian people (not Han Chinese) who moved to the area.
11 Posted on 05/13/2001 00:28:10 PDT by Lucius Cornelius Sulla[ Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | Top | Last ]
To: Lucius Cornelius Sulla
That is an interesting speculation to me. First, on the "writing", it is of course possible they are labels. It seems to me equally possible they are art. I mean, when the only place you find it is pottery and such...
But more related to your speculation, I suspect that the area around modern Alma Ata, west to Taskkent, was rather more thriving than a focus on architecture made lead many scholars to expect. The point is a fairly simple one. Nomadic herdsmen do not leave the degree of records behind that settled farmers do, but that need not, in the least, mean an absence of organized political life.
They may "start" or tend economically to disorganization, but they are also dry tinder for snowballing successful organizers and fighters. That is inherent in the way of life and economic means of existence - easily appropriated stock on the hoof.
That area was a focus of political power for ages afterward, and there is no particular reason to think the later pattern of migration out of the steppe was entirely new. As far back as there are records, regular migrations out of that region was found pushing other peoples hither and yon.
12 Posted on 05/13/2001 01:19:00 PDT by JasonC
[ Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | Top | Last ]
To: segis
ping! (just ignore the source) :^)
13 Posted on 05/13/2001 01:24:41 PDT by austinTparty[ Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | Top | Last ]
To: COB1
FYI
14 Posted on 05/13/2001 01:49:18 PDT by nopardons[ Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | Top | Last ]
To: sarcasm
Good posting: I read something about this on Linda Moulton Howe's website a few days ago. She has posted some pics.
15 Posted on 05/13/2001 01:58:42 PDT by janus[ Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | Top | Last ]
To: sarcasm
BTTT
16 Posted on 05/13/2001 03:18:35 PDT by Dan De Quille[ Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | Top | Last ]
To: Dan De Quille
"Could these people be related to the mummies being dug out of the sand in the Tarim Basin area?" The earliest, 4000-6000BC, mummies in this region are clearly Caucasian, probably Celtic from the dress. A lot of the males are 6.0+ feet tall. Later the mummies show a period of mixing, Caucasian/Mongaloid, and then finally, completely Mongaloid. I read a book, "The mummies of Uurumchi," about a study of the clothing of the early mummies. The plaids and weaving techniques of the fabrics are similar to the Scots of the present day.
17 Posted on 05/13/2001 06:34:11 PDT by blam[ Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | Top | Last ]
To: sarcasm
New discoveries in archeology always opens the door to accusations of revisionism.
18 Posted on 05/13/2001 06:43:17 PDT by sawgrass[ Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | Top | Last ]
To: blam
bump
19 Posted on 05/13/2001 07:23:48 PDT by sawgrass[ Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | Top | Last ]
To: blam
It was Colin Renfrew who argued over ten years ago in his book Archaeology and Language that the Indo-European languages come out of Anatolia (obviously, the languages left behind in Anatolia, like Hittite, would themselves have undergone further development, so, even if Renfrew is right, it would not quite be true to say that they are all descended from Hittite, any more than it is true to say that Romance languages like French or Romanian are descended from Italian.) But that's a minor quibble. I think a lot of linguists still resist Renfrew's view. Myself, I find it persuasive.
In Renfrew's view, Indoeuropean spread through Europe along with farming in the Neolithic Age. I don't think anybody has considered the possibility that some primitive form of writing may also have spread, along with language.
I remember reading in the Scientific American back when I was a teenager (so some 40 years ago) that protowriting similar to what this article describes has been found in Romania, and that, when an attempt was made to use carbon dating to date it, some result like 3000 BC which was thought to be absolutely impossible was reached. I wonder how much of this sort lies hidden in museums, hidden away some place because the scholars don't know how to classify it. The primitive counting script that preceded cuneiform was hidden in this way for a long time because no one knew what to do with it.
20 Posted on 05/13/2001 13:35:30 PDT by aristeides (demosthenes@olg.com)[ Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | Top | Last ]
To: blam
On Renfrew's scheme, Indo-European and farming spread through Europe much earlier than the reporting date for this apparent writing. Farming is dated 6500 BC in Greece, 5000 in Yugoslavia, 4000 in North France, 3000 in Scandinavia. So the spread of this writing in Central Asia is probably unconnected to the spread of Indo-European.
However, if this culture did spread from Anatolia around 2300 BC, then, if this writing originated there, there was writing in Anatolia considerably earlier than any yet discovered. I.e, there's more to discover in Anatolia.
21 Posted on 05/13/2001 13:42:48 PDT by aristeides (demosthenes@olg.com)[ Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | Top | Last ]
To: aristeides
"Colin Renfrew also provides much fascinating information on the hitherto most neglected and least known 'lost' branches of the Indo-European family - Hittite, Mycenean Greek in Anatolia and Tocharian in Chinese Turkestan and Sinkiang on the last stations of the Silk Road. It is remarkable that the former area is identified as the probable origin and the latter as the furthermost Eastern extent of the Indo-European family although both were long ago replaced by non-Indo-European speaking peoples,Turks and Chinese."
22 Posted on 05/13/2001 14:30:32 PDT by blam[ Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | Top | Last ]
To: Tasha
Bump.
23 Posted on 05/13/2001 20:03:06 PDT by blam[ Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | Top | Last ]
To: blam
>>The root of all Indo-European languages has been traced to Anatolia. The Basque language in Spain/France is the exception.<<
Yes and no. The Finnish,Hungarian,and Mari languages (Finno-Ugaric) are all closely related to each other,but are not rooted in either any of the Indo-European or the Basque languages. I said "yes" because technically neither the Finno-Ugaric or the Basque languages are really considered as European languages. They are unique.
24 Posted on 05/15/2001 02:58:39 PDT by sneakypete[ Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | Top | Last ]
To: sneakypete
"The Finnish,Hungarian,and Mari languages (Finno-Ugaric) are all closely related to each other,but are not rooted in either any of the Indo-European or the Basque languages." Thanks. I didn't know that.
25 Posted on 05/15/2001 05:11:54 PDT by blam[ Reply | Private Reply | To 24 | Top | Last ]
To: Thinkin' Gal, Jeremiah Jr, Prodigal Daughter
FYI
26 Posted on 05/15/2001 05:27:07 PDT by 2sheep[ Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | Top | Last ]
To: sarcasm
Bump.
27 Posted on 05/15/2001 06:41:45 PDT by Junior[ Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | Top | Last ]
To: 2sheep28 Posted on 05/18/2001 09:03:25 PDT by Prodigal Daughter
[ Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | Top | Last ]
