Silk Road Foundation

A postscript (notes and images) WATER ndividuals who invoke the term “Silk Road” may nancial benefits but at the expense of future genera- I have wondered at one time or another what it re- tions. Without water, the historic “silk routes” could ally might mean. What Ferdinand von Richthofen not have existed, and now huge areas along them are meant when he coined the term is clear enough, but threatened with becoming uninhabitable. over time the concept he enunciated in a very specific The second recent news item, brought to my atten- sense has morphed into a kind of catch-all term that tion by Victor Mair, was a short article in Newsweek often has nothing to do with historic exchange across (linked to the academic report) on 3 January 2018 the Old World (whatever geography and chronology summarizing new research by archaeologists at a site that term itself might imply). Readers of this journal called Mohuchahoangoukou in the Yangqi Basin, a may indeed wonder about its title, given how widely region nestled in the foothills of the Tian Shan moun- its content has ranged over the years. It is common- tains northwest of the Turfan Depression in the Xinji- place to invoke the past in the cause of contemporary ang-Uighur Autonomous Region. The task the authors concerns, but unfortunately too often the term “Silk set was to try to locate evidence that would shed light Road” bears no relationship whatsoever to the histor- on the early history of the development of irrigated ical realities it implies. agriculture in that arid region, evidence which might Not to be deterred here by such words of caution and then address the disputed question of what possible stimulated by two recent news articles, I am going to influences were responsible for its emergence (Li et risk putting down a few “notes for a future project” al. 2017). Strikingly, imaging from drones revealed a which may or may not (if it is ever completed) be complex network of canals and other dry-land farm- graced with the words “Silk Road” in its title. Suppose ing features. Ground survey confirmed the fact that we were to start a new history of the Silk Road with at least in the one smallish region studied, there was an emphasis on water. Might it in fact be the guiding a rather sophisticated infrastructure that supported thread that could tie together in some coherent way intensive farming, the site datable to approximately much of what we might like to say about culture and the 3rd–4th century CE. In other words, it is evidence exchange in the Old World, if those really constitute from a place and time that lie in the center of what we our subject? conventionally consider belongs to Silk Road history. Only at the end, and very cautiously, the authors sug- The first of the news items is not news for anyone gest that possibly those who were responsible for the who has been reading about climate change and its agriculture at this site may have been influenced by consequences. On 18 January 2018, The New York (or even came from) areas further to the west, where Times published an article by Somini Sengupta enti- similar dry-land farming techniques were known to tled “Warming, Water Crisis, Then Unrest: How Iran have been highly developed. At very least, the new Fits an Alarming Pattern.” At the head of the piece study questions the claims that have often been made was a dramatic picture of Lake Urmia, in northwest- in Chinese scholarship that settled agriculture in Inner ern Iran, which, as the caption indicated, has lost some Asia must have come in the wake of Chinese expan- 90% of its water since the 1970s. The picture very sion into the region. much reminds us of what we have been seeing in recent decades about the near disappearance of the Aral A similar set of questions underlay a recent study Sea. Both of these bodies of water, of course, lie along done by Arnaud Bertrand (2012) concerning the tanks some of the historic routes of travel and settlement (open reservoirs) which have been documented at the which we normally include in our thinking about the famous Silk Road site of Niya. Bertrand hypothesizes Silk Road. The point of Sengupta’s article was to em- that the possible inspiration and technical know-how phasize how the looming water crisis, which can be for introducing such a system of water collection and documented for many other places as well, is already storage, came from South Asia at the time when Niya igniting political unrest and has the potential to tear was part of the Kushan Empire. apart even the fragile remains of stability in many Capturing and directing water from stream or river heavily populated areas of the world. Moreover, the flow is, of course, only part of the story here. In her looming crisis is to be connected with ill-advised pol- article in the current volume on caravanserais in the icies of political elites, investing in dam building and Mongol Golden Horde, Emma Zilivinskaia notes their other mega-projects that may produce short-term fi- proximity to water sources, including the equivalent The Silk Road 15 (2017): 187 – 218 187 Copyright © 2017 Daniel C. Waugh, includng images (except as noted) Copyright © 2017 The Silkroad Foundation of the tanks or cisterns known from other regions. To focus on management of water resources that are When streams dry up, collecting runoff from season- essential for basic survival and settled agriculture is al rainfall may be essential. Wells and underground only part of the story, of course. While it is common channels called karez or qanat are amongst the sources to think that nomad pastoralists “followed the grass” which have long been studied (and, one might add, are with their herds, of course they were also following now under threat as reservoirs of groundwater are be- the water. Seasonal movement thus might be quite ing drained to feed burgeoning populations and in the localized, moving from winter camps in lowlands to service of often wasteful agricultural projects). Some summer pastures in the mountains, where water from years ago in this journal, Bertrand (2009) summarized snow melt might in fact be quite abundant and there information about such systems as documented from would be sufficient rainfall for the mountain pastures. the Turpan region and from comparative work in the Camps naturally would be located near water sources, Middle East (see also Trombert 2008). but even so some minimal “engineering” through the Clearly if we are to learn more about water availabili- digging of ditches or the like might be undertaken. ty and management historically, the most modern sci- Many pastoral communities also practiced a certain entific analytical tools must be brought to bear. Satel- amount of agriculture. None of this would have re- lite imaging has been applied already in studying the quired borrowing, even if some interaction with the situation in Niya, in the important Murghab delta re- outside world might have been the norm, important gion at Merv (Padwa and Stride et al. 2004), and in the exchange taking place along the “steppe roads” or, in area around the fortress of Resafa, in the eastern Syr- Michael Frachetti’s recent formulation (2012), the “In- ian desert. Palaeoclimate data based on sampling of ner Asian Mountain Corridor.” glacial ice cores has suggested a correlation between Water management might also require high levels of the demise of Niya and climate change which dried engineering skill and the marshalling of resources that up its river (Yang et al. 2004). would be beyond the means of small, local commu- For Resafa, the recent detailed analysis includes nities and individual actors. Aqueducts, dams, dikes, techniques for determining porosity of different soils, tunnels or canals are important big ticket projects modeling to predict the amount of run-off from rain whose visibility has undoubtedly overshadowed the during different seasons of the year, extrapolations evidence which is harder to come by concerning local from modern climate data to arrive at reasonable esti- communities. Some technologies, such as the use of mates regarding climate in earlier centuries, and more animals or water wheels to raise water from wells or (Beckers 2012; Beckers and Schütt 2013). Excavation from a river bed to higher surrounding banks, might data, even if very selective, has demonstrated the exis- easily have been conceived and employed without tence of dikes and dams from early times. Much more external inputs. In fact, if water is to be our guiding needs to be done to analyze organic remains and oth- thread here, it is woven into a tapestry of consider- er kinds of evidence that may help confirm chronolo- able complexity. Projects on different scales may in gies. The result so far confirms that the huge cisterns fact serve different purposes specific to one society at Resafa, dating from the period when it was a late or polity but not to be observed in the same way in Roman/Byzantine fort and continuing to be used un- another (Kamash 2012). Water-powered mills to grind der Islamic occupation, would have supplied enough grain might be fairly simple, but devising the mech- water from the collection of run-off during the rainy anisms and employing them in order to cut stone season to maintain a sizeable population during an might demand a different level of knowledge and in entire year of little rainfall that might follow. There is any event be irrelevant in societies where mud brick, interesting comparative analysis of the evidence from rather than stone was a basic construction material (it- Resafa with that from Petra, another dry-climate site self requiring access to water).

Load more