Greetings!
Local tour guides are the real ambassadors of their
countries, and will determine whether you and I visit – more than tourist
bureau advertising, hotel and airline promotions, or tour owner brochures in
the mail. They make our travels so
much more valuable, and they provide us with the memories that stay with us.
You're probably wondering what happened to the last week of posts. I really wish that I could have sent some fascinating insights into Turkmenistan. But the country is a combination of unbelievably beautiful religious buildings, old historical monuments, and new architectural wonders. Run by a President whose picture is everywhere, and enjoys almost absolute power, the combination of new construction, colorful people, and original historical sites, is almost beyond belief.
But there is an absolute block on the Internet, and communication is very controlled. So I hope you enjoyed the break from posts, and that you'll let me catch you up with a whole lot of photos.
But before i do, let me include a little bit of why the area's history is so important to the world.
Over the last 35,000 years, the use of materials has helped
us name the time epochs. Stones as
tools gave the longest era its name “stone age”. Lithic (Greek for “stone”) ages was called “Paleolithic”
(ancient stone age, 35,000 to 11,000 BC), “Mesolithic” (middle stone age,
11,000 to 7,000 BC), and “Neolithic” (new stone age, 7,000 to 5,500 BC). The discovery of copper gave the period
after 5,500 BC its name “Eneolithic” (copper age, 5,500 BC- 4,000 BC). Adding copper, tin, and mercury to
create bronze created the Bronze Age (beginning at 4,000 BC).
About 6,500 BC, in the middle of the Neolithic period, in
the foothills of a mountains northwest of our present location, some nomads heading
north from Persia decided to take up agriculture and cattle farming. They chose that particular area because
it contained a large amount of natural springs originating higher up in the Kopet
Dagh mountains, and the climate in southern Turkmenistan was moderate. There were also deposits along the
river of fine clay, pure enough to dry out without cracking, and strong enough
to build straight, thick walls creating wide rooms with narrow doors they covered
with animal skins.
This culture, called “Jatun”, and those at Namazga Depe, Kara
Depe and Anau created over the next two thousand years the plough, pottery
wheel, hearths, benches, wooden beds, and a healthy “white wheat” farming
economy which led to extensive cattle breeding. By 4,000 BC, they began to use goods made of copper, labour
tools, two-edged knives and tableware.
They learned to smelt and form metal, and to produce different
adornments made of gold, silver, and copper. They made a great deal of ceramic tableware, including
hemispherical and cone-shaped dishes and plates, and jugs adorned with
complicated ornaments. They also
began to make dyes. Patterns of
modern carpets are very similar to patterns of ancient jugs.
Today, we visited a site currently named Old Nisa. It is the palace of the King of a great
civilization (Parthians) which dominated Central Asia from 300 BC to 300
AD. Only a few miles from the original
Jatun site, it used the same unusually clear clay bricks to construct the
residences, waiting and meeting rooms, and servant passageways within the
fortress’s 200 hectare complex.
The place and the people of this area should be remembered for playing a
central role in the world’s transition from nomadic to agrarian society.
To see the photos taken over the past three or four days (aftr a couple of days of driving), click on:
Yesterday was a long drive from Shekhi, Azerbaijan across the border to Georgia, to its capital of Tiblisi. The small towns we passed were snuggled up against South Caucasus mountains for the first time, and we followed several of the country's 27,000 rivers.
And the language changed. The Georgian script is one of only 14 world alphabets, and evolved around the 5th century. 
Before arriving in Tiblisi, we stopped in the royal town of Signagi. King Erekle constructed a defensive wall to keep out the Persians in the 16th century.
But the highlight of the day was a St Nino's Nunnery, where the residents kept a beautiful garden. Built in the 3rd century AD, Georgia followed Armenia in becoming a Catholic country about that time.
