Lands of Asia layouts (Eng) 26.11.21

part iv | migrations of cultures
the East. It would be wrong, however, to reduce the significance of the Silk Road in the
history of world civilisation solely to the silk trade. Its role was much broader and more
complex, as caravans on the route did not only carry a variety of Eastern and Western
goods, but also spiritual values, ideas and religious philosophies. Between 10,000 and
9,000 BC, in the south-west of Anatolia, in upper Mesopotamia and in the Levant, the
first centres of the future ancient civilisations of the East began to emerge, with the
transition from economies based on hunting and gathering to productive ones based
on early irrigation methods for farming and on cattle breeding.
The great civilisations of antiquity formed a vast belt in a geographical area
between latitudes 20 and 50, between the South and East China Seas and the Atlantic
Ocean.
Initially, during the Neolithic period, the first farming cultures, the bases of later
ancient civilisations, occupied separate isolated territories (the Southern Balkans, Asia
Minor, Mesopotamia, the Eastern Mediterranean, south-western Central Asia, the
Indus Valley and the lower reaches of the Huanghe or Yellow River) separated by vast
uninhabited spaces, and these were in fact almost unconnected to one another. The first
permanent settlements, prototypes of future cities, emerged at this time – Jericho and
Chatal-Huyuk. During the Chalcolithic and Bronze ages, when the first civilisations
and early state-like entities emerged, a trend towards the expansion of territories began.
Thus, the territories of the Cretan-Mycenaeans, Egypt, Mesopotamia and Luristan were
established, along with the civilisations of Transcaucasia and the northern Caucasus,
the Namazga civilisation, which spread widely in southern Central Asia, the Harappan
or Indus Valley civilisation, and the Yin civilisation of China. Trade began to take place
across several thousand kilometres of land.
Around 3300 BC, in Southern Mesopotamia and Egypt, the first societies with
state-like structures in the history of humankind, the so-called nomes, emerged – citystates
established by the Sumerians and ancient Egyptians. They traded with, and
pursued a policy of colonisation over, neighbouring regions, in particular Elam with
its capital, Susa.
In early 3000 BC, the Elamites migrated even further, thereby expanding the range of
cultural influences and trade relations. Proto-Elamite tablets, impressions of cylindrical
seals and unique specimens of pottery have been found at sites on the Iranian Plateau, in
Tepe-Hissar, near the border with Turkmenistan, and in Shahr-i Sokhta on the border
with Afghanistan – i.e., thousands of kilometres northwest of Elam itself.
In turn, a stream of cultural influences was flowing southwards and south-west
from southern Turkmenistan, home to the thriving and well-developed Namazga
culture at that time. Pottery and other articles from this culture have been found at
Shahr-i Sokhta in present-day south-eastern Iran, and at the Nosharo and Sibri sites
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