Under Ashgabat traces of an ancient civilization were found

Ancestors Turkmen knew how to write four millennia ago?

Archaeologist Fredrik Hibert from the University of Pennsylvania, conducting excavations on a closed until recently for Western scientists near Ashgabat, under the place of Anau, found a stone four thousand years ago with the letters of an unknown accommodation type. It is assumed that the stone was used as a print. These letters are similar to the ancient Chinese, but appeared much earlier than in China. In addition, archaeologists have discovered other material traces – such as the remnants of a long brick palace. This suggests that around 2000 BC on the place where two thousand years later, the Great Silk Road, and later the current capital of Turkmenistan appeared, there was an unknown civilization in the bronze age, which created their writing.

Recently, Fredrik Hibert was a member of the meeting of the Scientific Council of the Institute of Cultural Heritage of the Peoples of Turkmenistan, Central Asia and the East under the President of Turkmenistan, held in Ashgabat. Here he said that the joint Turkmen-American expedition was created back in 1993 to study the two Anaau hills, which were called the Northern and South. The purpose of the program is to determine the relationship between the development of ancient culture and the environment, starting from the period of the earliest settlements whose age reaches seven thousand years, and ending with the late Middle Ages, that is, a relatively recent past. This program is of interest not only for scientific circles, but also for a broader public, because it concerns such an urgent topic as the study of human adaptation to changing natural conditions. In addition to the purely archaeological work under the Program, anthropological, paleobotanical and paleozological surveys are carried out. Scientists are trying to find out to what extent climate change and state of ecology influenced the development of culture.

Anautical scientist Rafael Pampleli, who came here in 1904, was already in old age (he was then 73). When the Carnegie Foundation in Washington organized the opportunity for him to carry out excavations in Anau, Pampelly, despite the fact that he was a geologist, not an archaeologist, with enthusiasm decided to use this chance – he even used to pay attention to Turkmenistan as a place where it may well be Unknown Science Civilization. Pampelly invited the experienced archaeologist Schmidt’s experienced archaeologist to his expedition, who at one time worked with the legendary Heinrich Schliman.

Excavations of the Northern and South Hills Anau confirmed all the guesses of Pampelly. There were numerous signs of the high culture existing here, the same ancient as Babylon and even older than Egypt of the Pharaohs epoch.Then it caused a sensation. In 1908, two huge volumes were published in Washington, in which Pampelly substantiated the assumption that people began to master the territory of Oasis Anau long before our era. These materials have become a major source for many years to study the ancient earliele cultures of South Turkmenistan, which since then called Anaus.

North Hill Anau again became the subject of serious study only 70 years after Pampelley. The Turkmen Archaeologist Cakamurad Kurbanshawov managed to significantly adjust the previously adopted chronology of the anaouth surplus and get a more detailed and accurate picture of the periods of adhesion of this complex. All of them were discovered twenty and they cover the early and middle anolithic.

And now for 7 years, Turkmen and American archaeologists work together, focusing on the southern hill. In its upper layers, a powerful platform was discovered, apparently served as part of the serfs of the Epoch of the Iron. It is in the Iron Age (the first millennium to our era) this territory was captured by Ahemedides and found it magnificent to control the caravan trading along the Copetdag Range. In fact, if you pay attention to the geographical position Anau, then it can be noted that in this place a kind of corridor between the doodles and speotdag is strongly narrowed. There is reason to believe that a little later, in the Parthian era, the city of Garar, mentioned by the ancient Greek traveler Isidore.

But back to the most amazing find from the anaouth excavations of 2000, which became a reason for the current numerous articles in newspapers and messages on the Internet after Fredrik Hibert spoke about discoveries in Pennsylvanian and Harvard Universities. The found miniature stone seal (her parties barely exceed one centimeter) contains writing cut on it, not similar to one famous science writing system. Of course, there are no speech about the decryption of these signs, but that the letters of an unknown alphabet are visible here, do not doubt.

When Fredrik Hibert has shown Orientalists in America photos of this press, they were puzzled. It is clear that this is not Mesopotamian clinows, still considered the earliest system of writing, and not a proto-elements that existed sometime in the Iranian plateau. Experts on Indian archeology noted that the form of anaau printing does not coincide with the forms of famous seals from India and only one sign is like a letter of ancient Indian diploma. Specialists in the ancient Chinese civilization also assured that symbols here are clearly not Chinese, because in China, writing appeared several centuries after the print from Anaau. Dr. B.Meyer from Pennsylvania University expressed the view that this would be the origin of this press, the type of symbols and a small number of notches used to create each sign makes it thinks that this letter of writing is already abstract enough, and not pictographic.

Fredrik Hibert is not in a hurry with final conclusions. He is convinced: to get answers to many questions, intense excavations should be continued, and not only in Anau, but also on neighboring monuments. They are as ancient, but they still have not yet concerned the shovel of the archaeologist.

During the last visit to the American scientist Ashgabat, an agreement was signed on cooperation between the University of Pennsylvania (USA) and the Ministry of Culture of Turkmenistan. The purpose of a three-year study of Turkmen and American archaeologists who will be financed by a grant allocated by the US National Geographic Society is further work on Fredrik Hybert’s hypothesis.

At its press conference on this occasion, the American scientist reported that American geomorphologists will come in Turkmenistan in Turkmenistan to study the ancient settlement, and the new archaeological excavations near Anau begin only in May 2002. Since the hot climate does not allow archaeological excavation in the summer.