Lands of Asia layouts (Eng) 26.11.21

1.1
1.1
ORIGINS OF
CIVILISATIONS
Prehistoric cultures and archaeological sites
from the Neolithic Age to the Early Iron Age
The history of Central Asia dates back to early prehistory. Archaeologists have
established that the region was inhabited as early as the Lower Palaeolithic Age.
Evidence of primitive human settlement dating back 500,000 to 1 million years ago was
discovered in the Selengur cave in Southern Ferghana, in the Sokh river valley. Sites from
the Upper Palaeolithic Age (40,000–12,000 years ago) were uncovered in Samarkand,
at Amankutan and the Machai and Teshik-Tash caves in the Surkhan Darya region
of Uzbekistan. Studies of the remains of a Neanderthal boy found in Teshik-Tash are
further evidence of the existence and evolution of modern humans in southern Central
Asia. Rock paintings depicting bull hunting in Zarautsai in the Kugitang mountains in
the Surkhan Darya region of Uzbekistan, and the petroglyphs of the Shakhty cave in
Tajikistan date back to the Mesolithic Age (12,000–5,000 years ago).
During the Neolithic period (6–4 thousand years BC), three vast prehistoric
cultures developed in Central Asia: the Jeitun, Hissar and Kelteminar.
The Jeitun culture occupied the strip of the Kopetdag foothills in southern
Turkmenistan. Sites here revealed evidence of the oldest Neolithic agricultural
settlement in Central Asia, dating from the 6th or 5th millennium BC, possibly around
the beginning of the 4th millennium. The name comes from the first fully excavated
site, the Jeitun settlement, located 30 km north-west of Ashkhabad. Research was
undertaken here in the second half of the 1950s and early 1960s by the STACE
archaeological team (the South Turkmenistan Archaeological Complex Expedition)
led by V.M. Masson. Jeitun culture bears the hallmarks of the most important period
in human history – the transition from an existence based on hunting and gathering
to an economy based on agricultural production. The main activity of the Jeitun
1