Afghanistan.Pdf

60' ') u. s. R. \ ..;- ······... .\ ( z '······ ·~{ i'. '·"\ 'O;.• •i ..r······· # A R A i3 I A 100 ~00 1'•1U 1.ll.S Figurt 36. Map of Afglbanistan sbowing the route followed by the Museum party. AFGHANISTAN The reconnaissance described here has been followed in the summer of 1953 by the University Museum Expedition to Afghanistan under the direction of Rodney S. Young, Curator of the Mediterranean Section. He writes that Schuyler Cammann and Dorothy Cox are now beginning the excavation of a Buddhist monastery in the Kunduz area of northern Afghanistan. Once this excavation is under way, Dr. Young will begin test excavations in the ancient city of Balkh not far from the Amu Darya r iver on the Bactrian Plain. This research is in collaboration with the Kabul Mu- seum under the direction of Ahmed Ali Kohzad. Dr. Carleton Coon expects to arrive in Afghanistan in February or March, 1954, to make a search for palaeolithic sites somewhere in the region of the Hindu Kush. The great Eurasian mountain axis, the Caucasus-Elburz-Hindu Kush-Himalaya line forms a barrier from behind whose snow-capped peaks Turks, Iraqi, Iranians, Afghans, Pakistani, and Indians face toward inner Asia. Only two regions north of the barrier remain open for archaeological research by western nations-the Gurgan plain in northern Iran and the Bactrian plain in northern Afghanistan. For me this frontier is one of the most exciting regions in the world, not because of the current military strategy involved, but because it has had such a profound effect upon human history. No one knows when watch towers were first established in the passes, but the known history of southwest Asia is a record of attack from the northern Steppes. Cimmerians, Sarmatians, Scyths, Mongols, Turks, and a host of related peoples have broken through the mountain frontier like tidal waves across a reef. They have left the scars of pillage and destruction and the rubble of innumerable destroyed cities everywhere in the fertile valleys of the south. And yet, this mountain barrier is not only a battleground, it is a center for technological revolu- tion as well as invasion, and probably the birthplace of civilization. Certainly many of the basic inventions and discoveries such as irrigated agriculture, domestication of animals, manufacture of metal and related technological inventions were made here in the mountain foot hills and valleys, and the snow of these peaks supplied the water for the great river civilizations of antiquity on the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Indus. Caravan routes connecting China, India, Persia, Babylonia, and 41 the Mediterranean, which joined in the high valleys of Afghanistan, were the highways of trade before the age of European expansion. Afghanistan, lying astride the barrier at the center of the axis, is both the cross-roads and the gate-way of Central Asia (see map, Fig. 36). During April and May of 1952 my companion, Dr. Harold Amoss, Research Associate in Ethnology in the University Museum, and I, traveled from Turkey to the Khyber Pass in Pakistan along this mountain barrier searching for the most promising regions for future archaeological research.* The University Museum has been digging for more than sixty years in the Near and Middle East, most recently in Iraq, Turkey, Cyprus, and Iran, and it is now our intention to extend our research into Central Asia. With a jeep and ttrailer we found that it is ten hard days of travel from Teheran in Iran to Kabul in Afghanistan but it is worth it. This is the slow way but it is the way to discover for oneself the heart of Asia. Jeep travel on a graveled road which is overworked with heavy truck traffic is a kind of slow torture which many of us take for granted as a result of World War Il. On our way out of Teheran I was beginning to feel something of a martyr until on the morning of our second day we came upon a wild young Frenchman riding a motorcycle from Paris to Calcutta. My companion and I found him loading his machine before dawn in Shah-Rud, Iran. He had everything from a tent and bed roll to books on Middle East economy and Persian poets, extra parts for the motorcycle, drugs and collar buttons, even some French bread and cheese and a bottle of cognac. In fact everything but drinking water and gasoline. Some of his biggest bundles went into our jeep-trailer and from there on we were a motorcycle escorted cavalcade which completely puzzled all the soldiers at the military control points. We reached the Iran-Afghanistan frontier on the evening of the fourth day, after a break for refitting in Mashhad. This "city of fanatics" struck me as one of the pleasantest cities in Iran and I can understand why our Consul there, Mr. Gidney, preferred it to Teheran. In fact it was here that a conviction began to grow: the farther from westernized * The travels and research described in the main body of this article were financed by a grant from the Axel Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthwpology in New York City. 42 Asiatic cities the more friendly the people and the more pleasant the life. In my case the frontier was much more than 1200 kilometers from Teheran- it was more ne~rly a century away. The frontier military post in Iran at Usafabad is a kind of "Beau Geste" mud-walled fort on the edge of the desert. But just to take off from such an outpost into the desert and to drift off into the past several centuries just as night reached us was a kind of excitement which is worth twenty-four hours of air travel and three days in a jeep. Usually there are bright stars, but when there is a high dust it can be as black as the inside of a mitten. Mercadie led the way along a track on his motorcycle and we followed the glow of his headlight. Thirty kilometers of no-man's land separates Usafabad from the Afghan outpost at Islam Kala. It was like traveling for hours in the blackness of a cave, no light, no stars, only the faint track in the desert picked out by our headlights. Then when it seemed that we must have missed the post at Islam Kala, a single tall figure in a long white nightgown materialized out of the sand, presented a long rifle, and said in perfectly intelligible English, "Passports, please." Not long after that we picked up a faint lamp light and then two large handsome buildings set in separate compounds. The three of us spoke no Persian or Pushtu. Our welcome was hearty if wordless and we were soon happily bedded down in one of Afghanistan's famed rest houses for foreigners with all the familiar western equipment plus the finest Afghan rugs. Strangely enough there were no soldiers about- just a few attendants, the customs people, and those attractive big buildings in the desert. We saw no vehicle of any kind during four hours of driving from the frontier to the first big Afghan city, Herat on the Hari River. It lies near a broad low pass through the western part of the mountain barrier. It is a lovely lonesome country-desert, grassy hills, and cheerful streams, much like our Southwest even to the occasional 'dobe house and the nomads who might be Navajo. Of course there are all those big camels and the black felt tents together with the sheep, goats and tough little bright-eyed children. But it is the absence of motor traffic, the big quiet country of herding nomads, and the pleasant tempo of camel caravans which make one realize he has really crossed into an- other world where time plays tricks and the centuries are telescoped. 43 Herat, at first, seemed to be a series of great factory chimneys rising out of a brilliantly green valley. Actually I should have known that these "smoke stacks" were the standing minarets of the Mosque in what was known as the Mussala of Herat. The domes and the rest of the vast structure are gone and only the minarets remain. As we drove along pleasant tredined streets the illusion was confirmed. Here is a medieval city such as Marco Polo visited. But it was not at all what I expected. It is clean, with cool streets, tidy shops, and well,dressed people, no beggars crowding about, and only quietly curious people with a look of pride and quiet selh ssurance w hich I had seen nowhere else in Asia. Traffic in the streets consists mostly of two,wheeled carts freshly painted in bright colors and drawn by fat horses in bright new harness. I thought of all the dreary hacks I'd ridden in from Rome to Singapore. But the market place is crowded with packed camels, burros, and horses, even an occasional bullock, and then, with some surprise, we saw a very dilapidated C hevrolet bus'truck- the Afghan mail just in from Kabul, five or six days travel to the East. There was a shabby look about the bus,truck and its passengers which was jarring' ly out of place in Herat. Herat is ancient Arya, traditionally the birthplace of the Aryan people. No one knows how old it is but there is an ancient wall about part of the city said to have been built by Alexander and the vast ruin of an ancient city lies just north of the Alexandrian City.

Load more