In the lush mountains of eastern Uzbekistan, archaeologists discovered the remains of two medieval cities. This discovery could alter how we interpret the fabled Silk Road.
The business roads were much thought to have linked coastal places because they allowed for the exchange of goods and thoughts between the East and West.
However, archeologists have now discovered at least two northern towns that sat along a crucial junction of the trade routes using remote sensing technology.
One of the cities- Tugunbulak, a district spanning at least 120 hectares- sat more than 2, 000m (6, 600 feet ) above water levels, an altitude thought to be hostile yet today.
According to scientist Farhod Maksudov, who was a member of the study staff,” The history of Central Asia is now changing with this finding.”
The group believes Tugunbulak and the smaller town, Tashbulak, were bustling towns between the 8th and 11th ages, during the Middle Ages, when the place was controlled by a strong Turkic kingdom.
Just 3 % of the world’s population live above this level today. Rare instances include Cusco in Peru and Lhasa in Tibet.
The revelation led by Mr Maksudov, chairman of Uzbekistan’s National Center of Archaeology and Michael Frachetti, an scientist at Washington University in St Louis, was made possible with robots and a remote-sensing device known as laser, which uses reflected illumination to produce three-dimensional representations of the surroundings.
Their study was published in the scientific journal Nature this week, and experts who are unrelated to it have praised its significance in bringing attention to the lifestyles of nomadic communities.
The team first discovered Tashbulak, the smaller city, in 2011 while trekking in the mountains. They discovered burial sites, thousands of pottery shards, and other indications that the area was populated.
According to him, historical records mention cities in the area, but the team did not anticipate discovering a 12-hectare medieval city some 2,200 meters above sea level.
” We were kind of blown away”, Mr Frachetti told the BBC.
Even trekking up there was rough, he added, as they encountered strong winds, storms and logistical challenges.
Four years later, a neighborhood forest administrator gave the team a tip about a different location close to Tashbulak.
” The official said,’ I think I have some of those kinds of ceramics in my backyard.’
” So we went to his house… And discovered his house was built on a medieval citadel. He was like living on a huge city,” Mr Frachetti said.
Convincing the academic community that these cities existed was the most difficult part of these discoveries.
” We would say to people that we found this amazing site, and we would get scepticism, that maybe it’s not so big, or it’s just a mound, or a castle… That was the big challenge, how to document this city scientifically to actually illustrate what it was,” Mr Frachetti said.
The team returned in 2022 with a drone with a lidar sensor, which helped remove the surfaces from walls, towers, intricate architectural details, and other fortifications in Tugunbulak.
The researchers speculate that communities in Tugunbulak and Tashbulak might have chosen to settle there to use strong winds to start the smelting iron ores, which the area was rich in. Production kilns have also been discovered during preliminary excavations.
” Whoever had iron in their hands in medieval time was very powerful,” Mr Maksudov said.
But this could also have led to the communities ‘ downfall, he said. A dense juniper forest was once present in this area, but these could have been cut to facilitate the production of iron. The area became environmentally very unstable because of the flash floods, because of the avalanches, “he said.
Typically, scholars have expected to find evidence of settlements lower down in the valley”, so these finds are remarkable”, said Peter Frankopan, a global history professor at Oxford University.
What an amazing treasure trove… that illustrates the complex connections that criss-crossed Asia as well as the connections between exploitation of natural resources more than a millennium ago, he said.
According to Zachary Silvia, an archaeologist at Brown University, high-altitude urban sites are “extraordinary rare” in the archaeological record because communities there face unique challenges.
He wrote in a Nature commentary that” the team’s work makes an “immense contribution to the study of medieval urbanism in Central Asia.”