ISBN 978-92-3-102719-2 CONTENTS Contents PREFACE 7 DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT 10 MEMBERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE (in alphabetical order) 14 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS 15 INTRODUCTION 18 1 THE ENVIRONMENT 28 2 LOWER PALAEOLITHIC CULTURES 44 3 MIDDLE PALAEOLITHIC CULTURE 61 Northern India .................................. 65 The Thar desert of north-western India and Pakistan . 68 The lower Indus plains ............................. 70 The Potwar plateau, Punjab ........................... 73 Hindu Kush: the mountain region between the Indus and the Oxus . 75 Soviet Central Asia ............................... 79 Mongolia .................................... 83 Conclusion ................................... 83 4 UPPER PALAEOLITHIC CULTURES 85 Conclusion ................................... 104 1 ISBN 978-92-3-102719-2 CONTENTS 5 FOOD-PRODUCING AND OTHER NEOLITHIC COMMUNITIES IN KHO- RASAN AND TRANSOXANIA: EASTERN IRAN SOVIET CENTRAL ASIA AND AFGHANISTAN 105 Conclusion ................................... 122 6 FOOD-PRODUCING COMMUNITIES IN PAKISTAN AND NORTHERN INDIA 123 7 NEOLITHIC COMMUNITIES IN EASTERN PARTS OF CENTRAL ASIA 148 Conclusion ................................... 162 8 NEOLITHIC TRIBES IN NORTHERN PARTS OF CENTRAL ASIA 163 Conclusion ................................... 183 9 THE BRONZE AGE IN IRAN AND AFGHANISTAN 184 CONCLUSION ................................. 215 10 THE BRONZE AGE IN KHORASAN AND TRANSOXANIA 217 11 PRE-INDUS AND EARLY INDUS CULTURES OF PAKISTAN AND INDIA 237 PART ONE (J. G. SHAFFER) . 237 The Baluchistan Tradition ............................ 239 The Indus Valley Tradition . 253 Summary .................................... 262 PART TWO (B. K. THAPAR) . 262 Summary .................................... 270 12 THE INDUS CIVILIZATION 271 Mohenjo-daro .................................. 279 Harappa ..................................... 281 Kalibangan and other eastern sites . 293 Lothal and other southern sites . 299 13 THE BRONZE AGE IN EASTERN PARTS OF CENTRAL ASIA 308 Early cultural remains in Gansu province . 308 Later cultural remains in Gansu and Qinghai provinces . 311 Cultural remains of Xinjiang . 319 2 ISBN 978-92-3-102719-2 CONTENTS 14 THE DECLINE OF THE BRONZE AGE CIVILIZATION AND MOVE- MENTS OF THE TRIBES 326 15 THE EMERGENCE OF INDO-IRANIANS: THE INDO-IRANIAN LAN- GUAGES 346 The original homeland of the Indo-Iranians . 347 Spread of the Indo-Iranians . 358 Movements of Proto-Indians and Proto-Iranians and their migration routes . 361 16 PASTORAL TRIBES OF THE BRONZE AGE IN THE OXUS VALLEY (BACTRIA) 371 Historical Evolution ............................... 382 17 PASTORAL-AGRICULTURAL TRIBES OF PAKISTAN IN THE POST- INDUS PERIOD 387 18 THE PAINTED GREY WARE CULTURE OF THE IRON AGE 412 Conclusion ................................... 430 19 The Beginning of the Iron Age in Transoxania 432 The Amirabad Culture ............................. 433 The Culture of the Northern Tagisken Tribes . 436 The Chust Culture ................................ 439 Settlements in Southern Soviet Central Asia and Northern Afghanistan . 442 The Dahistan Culture .............................. 444 Conclusion ................................... 449 20 PASTORAL AND NOMADIC TRIBES AT THE BEGINNING OF THE FIRST MILLENNIUM B.C. 450 Conclusion ................................... 462 CONCLUSION 464 APPENDIX: A note on the meaning of the term ‘Central Asia’ as used in this book11The opinions expressed in this text are those of the author – Ed. 467 BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES 471 3 ISBN 978-92-3-102719-2 CONTENTS INDEX 507 History of civilizations of Central Asia 515 4 ISBN 978-92-3-102719-2 HISTORY OF CIVILIZATIONS OF CENTRAL ASIA HISTORY OF CIVILIZATIONS OF CENTRAL ASIA The dawn of civilization: earliest times to 700 B.C. Volume I Editors: A. H. Dani V. M. Masson UNESCO Publishing 5 ISBN 978-92-3-102719-2 HISTORY OF CIVILIZATIONS OF CENTRAL ASIA The authors are responsible for the choice and the presentation of the facts contained in this book and for the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of UNESCO and do not commit the Organization. The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Composed byUNESCO Publishing, Paris Printed byImprimerie des Presses Universitaires de France, Vendôme First Published in 1992 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 7 place de Fontenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SP ISBN 92-3-102719-0 © UNESCO 1992 6 ISBN 978-92-3-102719-2 PREFACE PREFACE Federico Mayor Director-General of UNESCO One of the purposes of UNESCO, as proclaimed in its Constitution, is ‘to develop and to increase the means of communication between. peoples and to employ these means for the purposes of mutual understanding and a truer and more perfect knowledge of each other’s lives’. The History of the Scientific and Cultural Development of Mankind, pub- lished in 1968, was a major early response on the part of UNESCO to the task of enabling the peoples of the world to have a keener sense of their collective destiny by highlighting their individual contributions to the history of humanity. This universal history – itself now undergoing a fundamental revision – has been followed by a number of regional projects, including the General History of Africa and the planned volumes on Latin America, the Caribbean and on aspects of Islamic culture. The History of Civilizations of Central Asia, hereby initiated, is an integral part of this wider enterprise. It is appropriate that the second of UNESCO’s regional histories should be concerned with Central Asia. For, like Africa, Central Asia is a region whose cultural heritage has tended to be excluded from the main focus of historical attention. Yet from time immemo- rial the area has served as the generator of population movements within the Eurasian land-mass. The history of the ancient and medieval worlds, in particular, was shaped to an important extent by the succession of peoples that arose out of the steppe, desert, oases and mountain ranges of this vast area extending from the Caspian Sea to the high plateaux of Mongolia. From the Cimmerians mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey, the Scythians described by Herodotus, the Hsiung-nu whose incursions led the emperors of China to build the Great Wall, the sixth-century Turks who extended their empire to the boundaries of Byzantium, the Khitans who gave their name to ancient Cathay, through to the Mongols who erupted into world history in the thirteenth century under Genghis Khan, the nomadic horsemen of Central Asia helped to define the limits and test the mettle of the great civilizations of Europe and Asia. 7 ISBN 978-92-3-102719-2 PREFACE Nor is it sufficient to identify the peoples of Central Asia simply with nomadic cultures. This is to ignore the complex symbiosis within Central Asia itself between nomadism and settlement, between pastoralists and agriculturalists. It is to overlook above all the burgeoning of the great cities of Central Asia such as Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva, which established themselves in the late Middle Ages as outstanding centres of intellectual inquiry and artistic creation. The seminal writings of the philosopher-scientist Avicenna (a native of Bukhara) and the timeless masterpieces of Timurid architecture epitomize the flowering of medieval culture in the steppes and deserts of Central Asia. The civilizations of Central Asia did not, of course, develop in a vacuum. The impact of Islam was pervasive and fundamental. The great civilizations on the periphery of the Eurasian continent likewise exerted an important influence on these lands. For some 1,500 years this arid inland sea – far removed from the earth’s true oceans – was crucial as the route along which merchandise (notably silk) and ideas flowed between China, India, Iran and Europe. The influence of Iran – although the core of its civilization lies in South-West Asia – was particularly strong, to the extent that it is sometimes difficult to establish a clear boundary between the civilization of the Iranian motherland and that of the outlying lands of Central Asia. To the rich variety of peoples of Central Asia was thus added a multiplicity of external influences. For century after century, the region experienced the influx of foreign art and ideas, colliding and merging with the indigenous patterns of Central Asia. Migrations and the recurrent shock of military invasion, mingling and displacing peoples and cultures, combined to maintain the vast region in flux. The systole and diastole of population movements down the ages add to the difficulty of delimiting a region whose topology alone does not prescribe clear boundaries. Thus, when, at the nineteenth session of its General Conference, UNESCO decided to embark on a His- tory of Civilizations of Central Asia the first problem to be resolved was to define the scope of the region concerned. Subsequently, at a UNESCO meeting held in 1978, it was agreed that the study on Central Asia should deal with the civilizations of Afghanistan, north- eastern Iran, Pakistan, northern India, western China, Mongolia and the former Soviet Central Asian republics. The appellation ‘Central Asia’, as employed in this History, refers to this area, which corresponds to a clearly discernible cultural and historical reality.