aridity in the interior Asia was ever forcing emigration outward, displacing other peoples, and thus working against the establishment of a stable equilibrium of population. Asia is thus the field for applying all the comparative sciences that relate to the history of man—the materials that lie in cave deposits, in rock pictographs, in tumuli, dolmens, and ruined towns, in languages, customs, religions, design patterns, and anthropological measurements.
Turkestan, from its geographical position, must have been the stage on which the drama of Asiatic life was epitomized through all these ages of ferment. Peoples and civilizations appeared and disappeared, leaving their records buried in ashes and earth; but the fertility of the soil produced wealth, and the position kept it ever a commercial center.
So far as our problems of archeology and physical geography are concerned, Turkestan is practically a virgin field. In geology and cartography the Russians have done a surprising amount of excellent work; but the modern methods of physico-geographic study have been only begun to be applied, and the little archeological work done there has been mostly in the nature of hunting curios and treasure, chiefly by foreigners, and in so destructive a manner that the Russian government has till now wisely prohibited excavations.
Folds in the Limestone in the Sugun Valley west of Shor Kul, looking west
