2500 BC Turkistan Gonur-Tepe

[Ichingcarpenter]

1. More links and photos

Gonur was a large town for the times and home to thousands of residents. It was for all practical purposes, a city, a metropolis. The city had carefully designed streets, drains, temples and homes. The people farmed the surrounding fields growing a wide variety of crops and produce that included wheat, barley, lentils, grapes and other fruit.

The people of Gonur were also traders and were likely among those who developed the first trade links between the East and the West along what came to be known as the Silk Roads. The good the traders carried to distant cities included those made from for ivory, gold, and silver. They buried their dead in elaborate graves filled with fine jewellery and wheeled carts.

The north Gonur complex had a central citadel-like structure about 100m by 180m (nearly 350 by 600 feet) in size and surrounded by a high fortification wall and towers. The citadel was set within another vast walled area. This wall had square bastions and was in turn placed within a large oval enclosed walled area that included a large water basins and many dwellings and other buildings.

The archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi (see Sarianidi, page 3) who excavated the ruins, began a trend to call Gonur, Margush (or the capital of Margush), a name used by the Achaemenians for Mouru or Merv a thousand or so years after Gonur had been abandoned. We would prefer to say that Gonur was a major administrative centre and metropolis of Mouru, the older Avestan name for the nation.


More photos and info at link

http://www.heritageinstitute.com/zoroastrianism/merv/gonur.htm