good morning ladies and gentlemen it's a
great pleasure to see so many people at
9 o'clock in the morning in this theater
an extraordinary experience for us as
this whole exhibition secrets of the
Silk Road has proved to be you might
like to know that we've so far had
35,000 people visits the exhibit that's
upstairs which is virtually what we will
get in a year in one month and for us
it's been an enormous transformation
that we were we hope will lead to the
remaking of our galleries and better
stewarding of our own collections but
most of all - we hope that it will lead
to more research research of the kind
that I think is going to be on show
today this conference reconfiguring the
Silk Road really is a reprise of a major
conference that Victor Mayer the curator
of secrets of the Silk Road 15 years ago
held to great acclaim here in this
museum and subsequently published about
the tower and basin it's mummies and
most of all the archaeological issues
arising from those wonderful discoveries
by our Chinese colleagues so 15 years on
we're very grateful to be able to have
this reprise a reprise that will take us
from prehistory without well into the
Middle Ages in the course of the next
eight hours
our thanks in particular to the Henry
Luce foundation for making it possible
to hold today's conference symposium in
particular their Program Officer Helena
calendar who is here today and there's
been a great friend to this museum as
it's worked on Asian archaeology our
thanks to to the University of
Pennsylvania Centre for ancient studies
and its director professor Bob astahov
who's also here today who's also funded
this symposium this symposium will be
videotaped and you will be able to see
it on the website so if you
miss some of the provocation during the
course of the day you will be able to
catch up with it subsequently his
organization is doing a large merit to
Victor mayor himself who will speak this
morning and to Jane Hickman the editor
of expedition and our special programs
manager she is the the maestro of all
the proceedings the various elements
that go on today and if you have any
difficulties whatsoever address yourself
to her these are the coffee lunch or the
subsequent reception we have a fairly
tight schedule but we hope to have a
major discussion at the end
sadly Philip Cole professor of
anthropology it's a Atwells and he can't
be here because of ill health though
he's prepared some remarks and dr. Chris
Thornton one of our own so to speak will
be giving those remarks and knowing
Chris he will also add his own views on
these things since he's well versed in
that part of of Eurasia with that I'd
like to hand the podium over to my
colleague Brian Rose the deputy director
who will now chair the the morning
session Brian
thank you Richard and welcome everyone
there will be four papers in the morning
session with a break after the first two
papers and there will be time at the end
of each of the papers for some questions
we have microphones set up on either
side of the auditorium and there'll be
students who will take the microphone to
you in the audience if you have
questions we begin with Colin Renfrew
who was disney professor emeritus of
archeology and former director of the
McDonald Institute for archaeological
research at the University of Cambridge
he is now senior fellow of the McDonald
Institute his first book the emergence
of civilization the Cyclades in the
aegean in the third millennium BC
published in 1972 established Professor
Renfrew as a leading scholar of Aegean
prehistory in addition to his continuing
work in the Aegean professor renfro's
research interests include
archaeological theory and science
especially DNA and molecular genetics
and the origins of linguistic diversity
among his many publications is
archaeology and language the puzzle of
the indo-european origins his talk for
us today is entitled before silk
unsolved mysteries of the Silk Road Kali
well good morning ladies and gentlemen
and thank you very much Brian and thank
you Richard it's a great pleasure to be
here again
at one of these controversial symposia I
very much enjoyed the first one which
Victor organized and I hope we are going
to have some very lively and interesting
discussions today really for me I'm
talking about the period before silk or
a 10 rate before the Silk Road really
opened up as I understand it and we'll
hear more about this later
the earliest finds of silk in the
Western world are more less Hellenistic
date so the things I'm talking about are
before the Silk Road opened up for silk
and so one is talking about the even
vaster issue of the early connections
between east and west between Asia
between East and Asia between China on
the one hand and the West that is to say
the Near East as we call it Western Asia
and Europe on the other hand and it
turns out to be one of the liveliest
themes in world archaeology today
because it's only in the past two
decades that it's been easy for
researchers from one part of the world
to work in another part of the world so
it's only recently that the steppe lands
of Russia and Beyond to the east and the
pars of the Silk Road have become open
to investigation and that Eastern
scholars Chinese and we go and other
scholars have been able to visit the
Western world and study in the Western
world and vice versa
so we're talking about the vast terrain
which is indicated in that slide now
there are many Silk Roads
fair to say but we are focusing on the
Tarim basin on shinjang the shinjang
autonomous riga republic or province of
the People's Republic of China and so
we're dealing I think primarily with
this part of the Silk Road but it's
worth remembering that there are many
Silk Roads really and we have to bear in
mind the maritime route although that no
doubt opened up rather late in the day
and the whole range of routes which
there are between east and west
but I want to make one of the key notes
of my talk today even if it means being
a little provocative that I think the
main Silk Road is as indicated on that
map and it runs south there of the
Caspian Sea and it runs down along the
the route to places like Antioch on the
Iran T's places on the Mediterranean
coast and so I shall be making the point
that it is important to distinguish
between the steppe lands and the Silk
Road and I think a lot of confusion has
arisen in recent years by eliding the
two both are important now of course the
great romance of the Silk Road was
revealed to us in the late nineteenth
and the early 20th century when the
Taklamakan desert was first explored and
then for some decades rather neglected
and so this was the stamping ground of
sororal Stein and other intrepid
explorers in the early decades of the
20th century both before and after the
first world war and it was there in
these lost cities
of the desert that oral sign and his
contemporaries made astonishing
discoveries and of course one of the
most interesting was the documents
mainly Buddhist documents of about the
eighth century AD which all of Stein and
his contemporaries found and he was able
to get access to the great cache of
documents at Dunn Wang and indeed bring
many of them to the Western world a
controversial issue which I'm not
proposing to go into this evening except
to remind you that among these documents
were documents of what we now call the
talk rem language and when this was
deciphered fairly rapidly the the script
is not a problem it's an alphabetic
script but when the language was
deciphered and translated it turned out
to be an indo-european language and this
was a very surprising discovery to find
an indo-european language placed so far
to the east in the Tarim depression in
the Taklamakan desert and it remains
documented there and essentially nowhere
else about its relationship to the
indo-european language family is well
attested and dr. Mallory will no doubt
be talking more about that this morning
now the preservation is extraordinary in
this desert climate and this is one of
the cities there this is go Chiang and
there are well preserved buildings in
these totally abandoned cities where I
say well preserve their ruin but there's
lots of them but it is in recent years
that the human remains
so well preserved in the burials they're
sometimes called mammoth mummies but
they're naturally desiccated remains
have been discovered or rediscovered
because some were in fact found by
Alstyne and his contemporaries and by
our Chinese and Weger colleagues and so
I had the privilege of visiting this
site to VEISHEA with its excavator luang
guo some years ago and its outside or to
a fan at the foot of the flaming
mountains and here are the flaming
mountains it must have been an
extraordinary experience to go from
xi'an the great capital of china at the
period and go west and pursue along the
Silk Road down as far as as the
Mediterranean world
and of course it's hugely drives less
soil so when there is rainfall when or
when there is water there isn't a
rainfall but when there's a water course
then you see how the less soil is cut
through by the river and here is the
cemetery itself at the time of its
excavation and here is this
extraordinary figure this female burial
which of which apart is in the
exhibition here this woman with winter
clothing and her extraordinary hat which
looks like a magician's or which is a
hat this very interesting form of at and
there is this extraordinary garment
again now this really is why the Silk
Road is so important to us and I think
it sometimes gives rise to
misunderstandings which we find
wonderfully preserved things in these
sites and sometimes the nearest compr
anda are far away to the west and that
suggests links but I think part of the
reason for that is that the intermediate
evidence has often been
completely lost and there is the
excavator doing grow on the left of this
slide now I think it's helpful to remind
ourselves of the steppe lands and we'll
see no doubt in the course of this
conference many diagrams of the steppe
lands and the steppe lands as sketch
there are the yellow area on the map but
we see a shinjang province with the
Russia and so on in the area there to
the south and most of shinjang province
lies well to the south of the steppe
lands and this is a point I want to
emphasize today because I think there
have been confusions and I almost gave
the subtitle of my lecture one wheel few
horses but I thought that might be too
provocative so I thought I would
introduce that only later but here is
indeed the saddle profound in the
burials at survey XI which is indeed a
horse's saddle and thus the excavators
indicated this is what it would have
looked like when in use but it is not
the case that horses are particularly
well documented in this area and they're
certainly not documented significantly
in the burials before the first
millennium BC and of course we have no
finds to speak of yet prior to the
second millennium BC the glory or the PS
that the glory of the finds from
shinjang are the wonderful textiles
mainly woolen textiles and Elisabeth
barber who is the greatest expert we'll
be talking about them later on today so
I'm not going to try and say very much
about them and this example is from
1300 before the Common Era from the site
of hammy whoo poo and I bring it on
because this wheel it's the maybe other
discoveries of wheels but this is here
new one with which I'm familiar and I
hope to be corrected and told of others
if they do exist and this of course is a
wooden wheel of the same date and I
think it's worth saying that wheels were
not very important on the Silk Road and
you wouldn't expect them to be because
if you are traveling from Chien
westwards through the Taklamakan desert
a horse and cart or even a Bulacan
garter even a camel and cart would not
be your first requisite because
traveling on the Silk Road before tarmac
was not an easy task for wheels and so I
want to make that point because it may
be that I will fall into disagreement
with some of my colleagues who will be
speaking later on this theme and I want
to make the point that whereas I deeply
respect the work that has been done to
show the early use of the wheel on the
steppe lands I don't think it's a very
important part of the Silk Road story
and then we go on to this wonderful fine
from Yin pan which is in the exhibition
and this emphasizes the richness of the
textiles of the Silk Road in the early
Han period
more or less we thought now about
heaviness Roman times and the fines as
you would have seen are exquisite and
breathtaking and there's nothing like
this anywhere else in the world of this
kind of preservation when you're lucky
you find textiles and silks in very
early Christian contexts which I hope
we'll be hearing about later today but
this kind of preservation is totally
exceptional and so here are some of
these sticks out with these nice pretty
clearly some inspiration from the
Western world by now but as I say we're
talking about the other period of
and Industry so I want to make this
point again that I think the elision
between the steppe lands and the Silk
Road which enter some discussions is
insufficiently discriminating and I
think it's very useful to try and make
the distinction and the exceptional
preservation in the Taklamakan desert
and related areas is because of the
aridity of the Silk Road which made the
Silk Road inappropriate for a wheel
transport and less than ideal for pack
horses either so I want to give my
thanks to the colleagues who've helped
me on my visit and who have indeed
helped me subsequently I had the
pleasure of going to shinjang with
Professor mage and rune of the
University of Science and Technology and
was much assisted by the excavators of
some of the things that we're going to
see so there is my subtitle I've allowed
it to creep in now one wheel few horses
and so I want to deal with these topics
the earliest contacts and the millet
question then the first settlers in
Xinjiang very well documented the first
known settlers at present very well
documented by the wonderful exhibits
from chaja in the exhibition and then
the question of the first copper
metallurgy the question of the first
chariots in China and then the first
mountain warriors and really this is an
important point which I think has been
overlooked in many discussions it really
does seem to be possibly the case I'm
rather persuaded or I say possibly so as
not to appear overly contentious that's
the first mounted warriors on any degree
their appearance in the steppe lands
around about a thousand before the
Common Era or perhaps a little earlier
in the heartlands of the steppes 1200
before the Common Era in the andronovo
culture of the Eurasian steps and so all
the talk about mounted warrior nomads
spreading indo-european languages either
and liver I think is profoundly
misguided this is a matter of
controversy and you may hear alternative
views expressed in the course of the
morning which I shall suffer with the
greatest good good humour and patience
but as a say later in my talk I think
there are matters which are suitable
grounds for controversy and then I'll
say a little about the indo-european
question now the this slide I go to
doctor shin Yi Liu and it highlights the
two interesting and most striking events
in East West contacts which we don't
understand very well the finding of
broom corn millet panicum milli Assam in
context before 5000 BC on the one hand
in China and on the other hand in
Western Asia and in Europe how can that
be well it is the case and secondly the
finding of wheat hexaploid wheat bread
wheat in shower and other settlements
but shalva is the one where it's been
most effectively identified and I think
identified beyond doubt and it's
generally understood and I think it must
be right that this wheat originates in
the West now if we're going to talk
first of all about the millet
there is the map from Harriet hunt as
modified by Cheney new and this shows us
the finds of minute before that there
can be fairly confidently assigned
before five thousand before Common Era
now there is the possibility that
Millett was independently domesticated
more than once and though that may seem
improbable it seems to me more likely
than to have quite profuse contacts
between east and west along what we're
calling the Silk Road before five
thousand before the Common Era and I
don't have time to go through the work
that's been done on the mid it but DNA
analyses on on living on recent Lititz
does seem to show two main gene pools if
you look at the primary split which
perhaps encourages the notion of
independent domestication but a more
detailed analysis this is from the work
of Ariat hunt shows a number of gene
pools and the matter is still unclear so
I just raise that as one of the first
unresolved mysteries of the Silk Road
the next issue is the first setters in
Xinjiang province and the site here that
we see on the right with the red dot is
this wonderful site of Shalva which is
so richly documented in the in the
exhibition and the original excavator is
with us today and person who first
relocated the site and it was of course
investigated and published as
Dick's Necropolis in the early 20th
century and Viktor Mayer has written a
very good paper about that but dr. Wang
bingo ha is the person who relocated it
and then dr. idris abdul rasul is the
person who has reactivated it in recent
years and that is him at the left of
that photograph and so what we see in
the exhibition is largely the work of
his excavation and his team at arun qi
in the institute of archaeology of the
Uighur autonomous republic so here are
as you've seen also from the exhibition
the remarkable indications the
astonishing preservation these posts
still stand when excavated still
standing for all those years I mean it's
extraordinary for 4,000 years these
Timbers have stood in the desert and
there's very good evidence of the
artifacts the pottery is not discovered
at the site although it must have been
owned earlier but perhaps clays were not
available
but the preservation the extraordinary
here is my snapshot photo of the the
coffins just for storage piled one on
top of each other in the room Chi
Institute and here is one of the
beauties there are several beauties from
the area but this is the beauty of shahe
and a great deal has been made of the
seemingly Eurasian look but I was very
impressed by some of the beauties whom I
met and saw in in shinjang these are
these are we ger speaking ladies and I'm
not altogether persuaded that there is
any a huge difference and I'll say a
word about the molecular genetic
evidence
in a moment to make su categorical a
distinction and there is my wife
enjoying the company of these very
charming young ladies and in the burials
at Chow her are found these wonderfully
preserved baskets containing cereal
grain and this wheat mainly and millet
broom corn millet and ephedra and so
it's a remarkable excavation and gives a
great deal of new information but I
should mention the the molecular genetic
results on ancient DNA which have been
interpreted sometimes as giving clear
indication of influence of population
from the West and I'm sure in a general
sense that's true but it really is not
clear when that took place it might have
taken place thousands of years earlier
so I think a simplistic notion of a
quick equating language with culture
with genetics can be an
oversimplification and so though I agree
with scholars who suggests that the
tellurian language which is not attested
at about the 8th century AD the Turk
Arian language this Indian language may
well have come must really have come
from the West and may well have come in
in proto to carry inform with the first
population or an early population of
Xinjiang that early population may have
been very much earlier and also I'd like
to make the point which hasn't been
emphasized sufficiently that I think
it's possible that the approach of the
arrival of proto ZOA carrion may have
been along the Silk Road and I've been
at pains to distinguish between the Silk
Road and the step the step region and
takari and may well have come along
through
these passes of the Silk Road as indeed
the first week the first week we've been
speaking of and maybe even the first
minute if that really was a single
domestication process although if it was
a single domestication process perhaps
the flow was the other way from China to
the west but I think we should be
thinking about the possibility that
relative languages to early talk Arion
may have existed further west along the
Silk Road although without any direct
evidence that's very difficult to
discuss wonderful preservation of shaho
this is a Phelps ihat it's just
absolutely extraordinary
you know I must move on and say a word
about the earliest metallurgy in
shinjang and this is a subject that's
being very well treated by May Jan June
and so I don't have very much to add to
it and these sides are ones which he
kindly lent to me for this talk and
there you have on the right you have the
early metallurgy of shout of the Shang
Dynasty of China from sites like a veto
and then on the left you have the fines
which are just as early or maybe earlier
in a shinjang province which has some of
the earliest copper finds of China and
so it seems very possible indeed
probable that the technology copper
working technology did indeed come to
China either along the Silk Road or more
likely along the steppe route and that
these finds which may Jan June has
documented these finds from around 1500
BC or a little earlier this may be the
still to me very surprisingly late
origin of copper metallurgy in China
which so rapidly became so influential
with the development of the wonderful
Shang bronzes and Jo bronzes and so on
however this is a story that's been well
discussed a bi mage and June and and his
colleagues so I don't have anything to
add to that except to say that I think
there's still a great deal to learn
about that process and certainly these
intermediate areas including Xinjiang
are an important part of the story the
same is true of the first chariots David
Antony will be talking to us I hope
about those today and I think the work
of himself and the his Russian
colleagues has really clarified the
origins of the chariot which is first
documented at sym - - around 2000 BC as
he indicated in his article in antiquity
many years ago and again I want to
emphasize that the chariot is associated
with the steppe lands as indeed is the
horse and indeed as we'll see in a
moment are the mounted warrior horsemen
but it is impressive that the chariot
became so important in Mesopotamia and
indeed ultimately in in Egypt and was a
chosen vehicle for transport in warfare
just as it became in injo times in China
and it's still unclear to me how the
chariot reached China at a detailed
level I think we don't doubt that these
fines from syntactic are just about the
earliest chariot fines that there are
and presumably the chariot reached China
along the steppe lands but the chariot
is not found significantly or indeed I
think at all
in shinjang nor would you expect to be
in that terrain which would not be
suitable for chariot
so it must have been a more northern
route and though there's great
scholarship on the chariots of the Jo
period in China the distinguished
article by Shaughnessy and so on the
question of the actual mechanism of the
transmission of the chariot as I think
not been well addressed yet or not that
I'm aware of and here again there's the
syntax defines which are very clear it's
further east that the picture becomes
less clear until you find them of course
at an yang and so on in the burials of
the Shang and Jo of periods do I say the
mechanism of transmission is not very
clear now to my penultimate point the
first mounted warriors in China and I
think it's clear that the first mounted
warriors in China were around a thousand
BC there is very interestingly new radio
carbon carbon Evans from the site of Li
Shu II in the Kunlun mountains at the
south side of the Taklamakan desert in
Xinjiang province and these dates seem
to be earlier than the dates from the so
called Scythian tombs at Arjun which are
around 800 BC further to the north and
these are the first documented mounted
nomad warriors and that is when as I
understand it the economy of the steppes
changed very significantly no doubt with
antecedents in the and Renova culture as
Russian scholars have argued but this is
a approximately 1000 BC and that I lay
evidence is becoming clearer and better
and better documented and indeed better
and better understood and I know Michael
4kg who's going to be talking to us this
morning has views about the development
of local economies and the way if you
rightly on study individual areas you
begin to understand the the processes of
transformation
which led to these fundamental changes
in the economy of the steppe lands which
had their impact also on the Silk Road
so there is Herman parsing as map of the
andronovo culture and there at the right
is the site of saasy in Xinjiang
province and there is may genuine
sketches of pottery of the andronovo
culture at that locality and his drawing
of pieces of broadly Scythian character
i dislike using the word city and far to
the east because we know something about
the city ins in the ukraine and about
the language of the Citians
and i'm not sure that it's appropriate
to use the term city and so far east of
this but it's similar mounted warrior
nomads anyway and there is one of those
wonderful gold and nick rings from our
john from the very rich burials that
harem which I was just mentioning and
some of the horse accoutrements there
and then here's this wonderful piece of
preserved textile from Paz Erick from
the burials at Pass Eric well that leads
me very rapidly to my final point and
that is indo-european origins and now
this may not be the occasion for a
complete reversal of the indo-european
problem there would be a pleasure but
maybe for later on in the day but there
are at the moment I think to the
preferred models one is for an early
origin and in Anatolia in Turkey around
six seven thousand before the Common Era
and that is a farming language dispersal
model and the other is for the core gun
mounted nomad warriors Maria Gimbert
asses theory following that of warden
child and predecessors centered in the
Ukraine and as I've already indicated I
think this is based on a misconception I
do understand that the horse was
domesticated for food feeding purposes
much earlier
and then you see it first used in
warfare with these chariots around 2000
BC and then the mounted were nomads
warriors really spring onto their horses
and gallop off making warfare around a
thousand BC and not much earlier in in
my view so that just summarizes not much
more to say about that
for the steppe lands I think the work of
David Antony and colleagues has
indicated site site director and others
in Kazakhstan site of bata and you have
horses being extensively used for the
food from 3,500 and very possibly being
ridden for horse management purposes and
then I've already mentioned there's
other points now to turn to the
indo-european family this is the tree
from Don Rindge and his colleagues and
the beginning above it I tis
proto-indo-european and then Hittite
which of course is one of the in
European languages of what is now Turkey
of Anatolia is the earliest and then
talk Arian is the next branch and you
have to come right down to the bottom of
the tree to get to Vedic and a vestan
when you come to the indo-iranian
languages of which Sogdian and probably
Scythian are examples around the 1st
millennium BC reaching as far as this
area solved and as we've seen in the
exhibition was spoken in the first
millennium ad in this area and so I
would now keep on changing my mind on
this I said something slightly different
at the symposium here a decade ago I
rather wonder if Johar Ian did indeed
reach shinjang along the Silk Road maybe
from I'm not saying it with the language
of the bactrian MA mouth bacteria
margiana archaeological compacts
so-called BMAC but it may have been
spoken in that area and it may well have
been learnt there directly from a turkey
which lies to the west a point that
viktor sarianidi himself has made in the
past well and this is the rather
complicated diagram from a grey and a
concern but I want to indicate to you
the the dates if I press the right
button here I may I'm going to show you
other well these dates here are years BP
before the present and the earliest
division between Hittites and the rest
on their system is 6700 before the
Common Era and then you get Tahari and
very soon afterwards and then it's
rather later that you get the relevant
dates or the indo-iranian family well I
can't go into that in detail now and
dates are always controversial matters
among linguists so it would be
completely wrong to put the same weight
on calculated dates calculated by
skilled linguists whereas radiocarbon
dates are not precise always but I think
in a general sense they're fairly
reliable but on that system you will see
that the dates for the original
indo-european dispersal are there is the
age in millennia before the present and
the the pale green shading where they
happen to lie is what would be predicted
on the farming language dispersal
hypothesis and the pale blue shading is
what would be predicted on the corgin
hypothesis and without being unduly
contentious I would point out that they
do not lie in the pale blue area so
that's more of more detail of the same
really so I think this is a possible
scenario for the early occupation of the
Silk Road sparse hunter-gatherer
population in the 5th millennium BC and
that's what we don't really know very
much about yet
this is what we must expect our Chinese
and Weger colleagues to work on that's
what we want to know about and the
evidence must be there then the
acquisition of millet cultivation from
Gansu in the fourth millennium I imagine
and I've left open the question of
whether there was really contacts with
the West that home iddat question that
I've discussed and then around 3000 BC I
imagine we have a farming language
dispersal from the West are certainly
documented at shower by a 2000 BC with
that exploit wheat that red wheat and as
I've indicated though it's very
hypothetical I imagine that there may be
an association with prototype Aryan
coming in maybe from somewhere like
toque mania around that time and then we
have the Cheerios getting going at 1500
BC but not making any great impact on
the Silk Road itself and then the
mounted Nomad warriors around a thousand
BC do change the world that was a
massive change of the world and then we
have later on to carrion and Sogdian and
so on and then of course it's after that
that the Silk Road really opens up as a
Silk Road which we're looking forward to
hearing about from Peter Brown Joseph
Manning this afternoon and here is this
famous image allegedly representing to
carrion warriors of the around the 8th
century BC and there is here I take my
bow and thank you very much
thank you for that masterful overview of
the Silk Road I would like to throw the
floor open to the audience
I try to be provocative sighs somebody
would you be willing to consider a seed
dispersal for early millet for example
or metal or anything else and I'd
certainly be willing to consider such a
thing but it's difficult if we're
talking about millet and we're talking
about before
five thousand before the Common Era 5000
BC I think it's quite difficult to
imagine communication between the
Mediterranean world and the and the Far
East by that day - bye see if we're
talking about copper when we are talking
copper metallurgy around 1500 BC I think
it's still quite difficult I'm not sure
that the distribution of early copper
working in China is particularly focused
on the coast not that it would have to
be if it was a maritime distribution so
I would think that really prolonged
contact by sea between the West and
China didn't really develop until after
the Silk Road had got underway it's
another question if we're talking about
a southern Silk Road a land Silk Road
but going down into South China and then
through Southeast Asia but there isn't
very much evidence for that yet so sorry
have been rather than lengthy I think
the answer to your question is no
if you were a stock raiser and you were
living in the teram Basin and possibly
going north to graze your livestock in
the winter then the remains in the Terra
Basin would be only half of the evidence
of those people that's very right and
one thing that supports that point of
view is the the wonderful variation in
the clothing that you find in the
burials Elizabeth Barbour could speak to
this much better than I but you have you
see clothing that's suited for winter
and in some burials you see clothing
that is suited for summer and you're
quite right they must have been on the
move I haven't really seen any very
careful discussions of what the pattern
of movement of one community would have
been at any particular time the sort of
work that microfolk Ettie has been doing
in in in Kazakhstan and he may have some
ideas on that I think there is a real
problem as victim air has emphasized
that the burials at shava are burials
it's a cemetery it's a concentration and
they're dwelling places and have not
been located this is not too surprising
with what may have been a mobile
community but it is not clear that these
were nomads in the sense of having
significant ransom ins which I think you
were perhaps referring to which may have
developed later they were mobile people
but they may have been partly mobile in
the way that hunter-gatherers tended to
be of course they had their
their livestock including some cattle
but I don't think in the absence of
their settlement evidence it's been
possible to give any very deep thought
as to the extent of the mobility of that
community on an annual basis and that
would be something would be very
interesting to take further so I think
your point is right but it's not really
been very much addressed so far
one tiny little addition to your point
about the broom corn millet suddenly
turning up at two ends of Eurasia there
are some interesting things to do with
weaving that suddenly turn up at both
ends of Eurasia at about that same time
so there's more out there too to answer
for that we haven't found there are
clear fairly clear connections between
what's happening in terms of textiles in
East Asia and what's happening in terms
of textiles in western Eurasia at about
five thousand BC I too don't know how
these were getting through but what it
means is we need to keep looking in the
middle what what textiles do we have at
5,000 BC I could understand what you
were saying if you were speaking around
2,000 BC but where we got the textiles
to make the comparisons at five well we
have the impressions on pottery that
showed that they were making and we also
have evidence apparently that they were
using him in East Asia before they
started using things like silk that's
much later they were already making
textiles they were apparently making
them out of him and the impressions on
the pottery suggest that they already
knew the heddle and the Hetal is such a
strange conceptually difficult device
that it is probable that it was only
thought up once in the late Paleolithic
and about 5000 BC you start getting this
evidence welling up in East Asia and
you're getting much much more of it in
Western Eurasia
we have a more we have a lot more data
in western Eurasia but it's very
peculiar that it suddenly turns up in
East Asia about 5000 BC I think we've
got to be very cautious about
you can propose but they very cautious
about accepting long-distance
connections at a particular time period
and as you've said and as you know much
more about it than I do the evidence for
textile production or weaving order sort
of simple techniques of that kind is
increasingly emerging in the Upper
Paleolithic period and so if we see
something occurring time for the
preservation is not good we don't
actually have textiles to speak of in
the sense of you can actually feel the
textiles in very many cases it's so
earlier date so it's perfectly possible
that some of the things we may notice
here at one time and there another time
do go back to the to the Upper
Paleolithic period I'm not suggesting
that about the minute although maybe not
excluded but I think we have to be
cautious and about suggesting very long
distance connections of any individual
period particularly if it's possible
they may both be the product of a
descent as it were cultural descent from
a much earlier time period so I think
it's a very interesting area but I think
that we shouldn't reach a conclusion too
readily on those problems
thank you again Kampf that lecture um
first I want to make a quick response in
terms of the migratory patterns just
because it was it was brought up and I
do have a question my best understanding
as someone who's worked in that region
with sure is that better my best
understanding of the migratory patterns
of pastoralists who live sort of around
the Terran Basin is as Colin mentioned
the use of mountains rather than sort of
grasslands and so if you imagine that
the basin literally as a depression of
pretty poor pasture land the only
territories where you're going to get
any kind of pasture is actually up not
necessarily north so you can imagine the
towering base and effectively ringed by
mountains and I'll say more about that
later but I think that that's an
important distinction when considering
that this is a populate a region that's
very different from the open steps of
your of your Asia um so that's just that
point my question in fact it comes back
to what you mentioned about genetics and
I was hoping that you would say a bit
more about some of the detailed evidence
just a few more words about what the
various lines of evidence are and what
your best understanding I suppose of how
to package them in terms of some of
these broader questions of East and West
I think that as you rightly pointed out
from my perspective genetics can be a
very dangerous and exciting scientific
tool and one that oftentimes leads to
fantastic conclusions but ones that have
to course be tested so I wondering if
you could say a few more words about
that thank you
first of all your first point I think is
very well taken and it perhaps gives a
hint at the way archaeology should or
ought or research should be developing
in Xinjiang the really ought to be cave
sites and shelter sites to slightly
higher altitude where one can find upper
paleolithic or maybe very early
neolithic traces and it doesn't all have
to be in the desert sands of the basin
itself and I'm not sure that very much
surface survey that much site survey
of an intensive nature has been carried
out of those slightly higher altitudes
and I'm sure what you say is right that
the really ought to be summer sites on
the uplands which it would be very
profitable to discover and that is maybe
where to look for more traces of the
shall earth community so I agree with
that very much and on the molecular
genetic front
it was our closing speaker today
Christopher fountain who wrote an
interesting article with tad Shaw some
years ago in the oxford journal of
archaeology taking I think it's fair to
say a rather cautious view I think first
of all the molecular genetics of the
contemporary populations have not yet
been very fully explored and I think it
always makes sense to imagine how much
of what one sees may be a product of
local continuities rather than all kinds
of comings and goings and as I
understand it the mitochondrial DNA data
that's the data in the female line it
shows very strong local continuities if
we're talking about the relatively few
samples that have been analyzed although
it's great that they have been by
Chinese colleagues from the site of
shower and other nearby sites and the
the female lineages that do seem to be
local of East Asian types whereas it's
certainly the case that the Y chromosome
which indicates the male line does
suggest some strong influences from the
West
but there the problem is that our
knowledge about the the y-chromosome
data in the West is built mainly on the
understanding of recent populations of
living populations there are rather few
ancient DNA analyses that have been
conducted in the west up to now there
are come have been happening in the past
two or three years and the influences
that one is beginning to draw from those
Western analyses if we're talking about
the spread of Agriculture and so on in
Western Europe do suggest a lot of
surprises when you actually compare
ancient DNA with ancient DNA it doesn't
suggest that the ancient DNA just and
automatically the parents of the living
population of today so I think it's a
field of some complexity that is of
great promise but it may be as I already
hinted that the Y chromosome features
that seem to be Western features could
be thousands of years earlier in
xinjiang province and we shouldn't
imagine people just a complete new
population sleeping in around 2000 BC
from the West that is an implication
that has been suggested but the strong
mitochondrial DNA lineages some of them
that are taken some time to sort of work
for the admixture of genes to work out
I think suggest caution and I believe
that the next 10 or 20 years again to be
very rewarding as we have more and more
ancient DNA dates we should remember
that most of what we know about
molecular genetics at present comes from
the molecular genetics of living
populations which are much easier to
work with but I hope Chris himself will
say something about that in his
including remarks
you