Murgab River, Turkmenistan
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 03.30.07 | 1:07 PM ET
Coordinates: 38 18 N 61 12 E
Length: 530 miles (853 km)
For historians, written records are a useful way of understanding the past. As technical methods for analysis improve, however, scientists are increasingly able to make sense of ancient societies by documenting changes to the physical landscape.
Such is the case in southeastern Turkmenistan, where archaeologists now believe a civilization once flourished around the Kara Kum Desert’s only reliable water source, the Murgab River.
Paleobotanical evidence of wheat and the ruins of large, walled towns suggest that population growth and prolonged drought likely drove people living in the Kopet Dag Mountains to a river delta that once supported a wide variety of wildlife and had the potential for agriculture.
—.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is the editor of the Oxford Atlas of the World.
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
