Ancient irrigation technologies migrated along Silk Road
Using satellite imagery and data from unmanned aerial vehicles, archaeologists from the Washington University in St. Louis discovered an ancient irrigation system that allowed farming communities to breed livestock and engage in crop cultivation in one of the most severe desert regions of the world in northwest China. The construction of irrigation facilities resemble analogues that earlier existed on the territory of Turkmenistan.
Yuqi Li, doctoral student of the Department of Anthropology and his colleagues in collaboration with the Laboratory of Spatial Analysis, Interpretation and Research of the University of Washington for the first time, used the satellite imagery to orientate in the Mohuchahan valley, which lies in the inter-mountain range of the Tien Shan.
In this area, surveyed by drone from a 30-meter height, the outlines of the dams, canals and cisterns, once fed the small farmlands, can be seen. The researchers believe that millet, barley, wheat and, possibly, grapes were cultivated there.
During the initial excavations, farm settlements and funerary sites were discovered.
It is assumed that the irrigation system was built in the 3-4th centuries AD. by local livestock communities, who decided to diversify their farming.
According to Li, the discovery gave an answer to the key question - how irrigation technologies get to this arid corner of the Chinese region of Xinjiang.
Previously it was believed that the main methods of irrigation were first introduced by the troops of Chinese Han dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD). However, Li and his team argue that irrigation in arid conditions already existed in these territories before the Han era, continued to be used in the post-Han period, and the irrigation "know-how" came from the western part of Central Asia, where agricultural traditions appeared much earlier.
Small-scale hydrosystems, similar in structure to those found in the Mohuchahan Valley, functioned in the delta oasis of the Geokysur river in the southeast of Turkmenistan (around the 3000 BC), near the Iranian settlement of Tepe Gaz Tavila (5000 BC) and in the south of Jordan. The process of transferring knowledge and skills from one agricultural community to another lasted for millennia.
In Xinjiang, irrigation probably spread across the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor through social ties established by nomads during the migration of herds to seasonal pastures.
“We think it’s more accurate to call them [nomad communities in ancient Central Asia] agropastoralists, because having an agricultural component in their economy was a normal phenomenon instead of a transitional condition”, commented Li.
Nowadays, the scientific interest is growing not only towards the exchange of agricultural crops, which actively developed along the Silk Road, but also to the ancient irrigation methods that enabled livestock breeders to diversify their economy.
Source: The Source of the University of Washington in St. Louis.
