OXUS

The story of a civilization that vanished from memory and was found again in the sands of Central Asia.About four thousand years ago, between the Kopet Dag mountains, the Karakum desert and the river the Greeks called the Oxus, farmers and traders built fortress-palaces of mud brick, dug canals, worked bronze, silver and stone, and linked their oases with Mesopotamia, Iran and the Indus valley. Archaeologists call it the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex. It left no readable writing, and it was not recognized until Soviet excavations at Gonur Depe and other sites in the 1970s.In 44 chapters this book follows the discovery, the land and the first farmers, the cities and their architecture, water, food, homes, clothing, crafts, trade, weapons, ritual, burial and society, the questions that remain open about language, ancestry and religion, the collapse of the cities, and the later history of Bactria and Margiana under Persians, Alexander, the Greco-Bactrians, the Kushans and the Silk Road, down to modern archaeology.Because the evidence is archaeological, every claim is labelled as excavated fact, scholarly interpretation or speculation, and every chapter ends with The Historian’s Verdict on what we know and what we do not. Illustrations are artistic reconstructions based on excavated plans and finds. Appendices give key people and rulers, a timeline, a guide to the evidence, a list of terms and a cast of people.