A forgotten Bronze Age civilisation built walled cities in Central Asia's deserts
Around 2000 BC, fortified towns with palaces, temples and reservoirs stood in what is now Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. Soviet digs uncovered this Oxus civilisation, but for decades its reports stayed mostly in Russian. It farmed with irrigation, domesticated camels, and left the earliest known wheeled cart models in Central Asia.
The Soviet archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi named it the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex in 1976, while digging in northern Afghanistan, and his later excavations exposed monumental buildings behind strong walls and gates. According to a 2001 New York Times report, the finds were largely unknown in the West until his work was translated in the 1990s, though some Soviet studies had appeared in translation earlier. The civilisation flourished roughly between 2500 and 1700 BCE, and even that span is argued over: Sandro Salvatori dates the urban phase to about 2400 to 1950 BC, while Nadezhda Dubova and Bertille Lyonnet argue most sites were founded on untouched ground around 2250 BC and lasted to 1700 BC.
Its roots run deep. In the Jeitun era, which began in 7200 BC, farmers of West Asian origin settled the well-watered slopes on the north side of the Kopet Dag range, raising goats and sheep and growing wheat and barley in mud-brick villages. By the Early Bronze Age, Altyn Depe was growing into a proto-urban centre with wheel-made pottery and grapes, and cart models found there from about 3000 BC are the oldest evidence of wheeled transport in the region. A model cart pulled by a camel dates to around 2200 BC.
At its height the largest site, Gonur Depe in the Murghab delta, spread over about 55 hectares, with a so-called Monumental Palace, temples, a royal cemetery and water tanks. Namazga Depe held perhaps 17,000 to 20,000 people. Some scholars now argue the names Oxus and BMAC are too narrow, since related settlements stretch into northeastern Iran around Nishapur, and propose calling it the Greater Khorasan Civilization. Its bronze tools and jewellery of semiprecious stones invite comparison with the Indus cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro.
Source: Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex
