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Tarim basin

3 paragraphs · about 1 minute

Every paragraph the index cites under Tarim basin, once, in the order of the book. Beside each stand the entries that cite it.

79:1.2For al­most fif­teen thou­sand years cen­ters of mixed And­ite cul­ture per­sisted in the basin of the Tarim River in Sinkiang and to the south in the high­land re­gions of Ti­bet, where the And­ites and An­don­ites had ex­ten­sively min­gled. The Tarim val­ley was the east­ern­most out­post of the true And­ite cul­ture. Here they built their set­tle­ments and en­tered into trade re­la­tions with the pro­gres­sive Chi­nese to the east and with the An­don­ites to the north. In those days the Tarim re­gion was a fer­tile land; the rain­fall was plen­ti­ful. To the east the Gobi was an open grass­land where the herders were grad­u­ally turn­ing to agri­cul­ture. This civ­i­liza­tion per­ished when the rain winds shifted to the south­east, but in its day it ri­valed Mes­o­po­ta­mia it­self.

79:1.3–7 · five paragraphs not cited here ·

79:1.3By 8000 B.C. the slowly in­creas­ing arid­ity of the high­land re­gions of cen­tral Asia be­gan to drive the And­ites to the river bot­toms and the seashores. This in­creas­ing drought not only drove them to the val­leys of the Nile, Eu­phrates, In­dus, and Yel­low rivers, but it pro­duced a new de­vel­op­ment in And­ite civ­i­liza­tion. A new class of men, the traders, be­gan to ap­pear in large num­bers.

79:1.4When cli­matic con­di­tions made hunt­ing un­prof­itable for the mi­grat­ing And­ites, they did not fol­low the evo­lu­tion­ary course of the older races by be­com­ing herders. Com­merce and ur­ban life made their ap­pear­ance. From Egypt through Mes­o­po­ta­mia and Tur­kes­tan to the rivers of China and In­dia, the more highly civ­i­lized tribes be­gan to as­sem­ble in cities de­voted to man­u­fac­ture and trade. Ado­nia be­came the cen­tral Asian com­mer­cial metropo­lis, be­ing lo­cated near the pres­ent city of Ashkhabad. Com­merce in stone, metal, wood, and pot­tery was ac­cel­er­ated on both land and wa­ter.

79:1.5But ever-in­creas­ing drought grad­u­ally brought about the great And­ite ex­o­dus from the lands south and east of the Caspian Sea. The tide of mi­gra­tion be­gan to veer from north­ward to south­ward, and the Baby­lo­nian cav­al­ry­men be­gan to push into Mes­o­po­ta­mia.

79:1.6In­creas­ing arid­ity in cen­tral Asia fur­ther op­er­ated to re­duce pop­u­la­tion and to ren­der these peo­ple less war­like; and when the di­min­ish­ing rain­fall to the north forced the no­madic An­don­ites south­ward, there was a tremen­dous ex­o­dus of And­ites from Tur­kes­tan. This is the ter­mi­nal move­ment of the so-called Aryans into the Lev­ant and In­dia. It cul­mi­nated that long dis­per­sal of the mixed de­scen­dants of Adam dur­ing which ev­ery Asi­atic and most of the is­land peo­ples of the Pa­cific were to some ex­tent im­proved by these su­pe­rior races.

79:1.7Thus, while they dis­persed over the East­ern Hemi­sphere, the And­ites were dis­pos­sessed of their home­lands in Mes­o­po­ta­mia and Tur­kes­tan, for it was this ex­ten­sive south­ward move­ment of An­don­ites that di­luted the And­ites in cen­tral Asia nearly to the van­ish­ing point.

79:1.8But even in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury af­ter Christ there are traces of And­ite blood among the Tu­ra­nian and Ti­betan peo­ples, as is wit­nessed by the blond types oc­ca­sion­ally found in these re­gions. The early Chi­nese an­nals re­cord the pres­ence of the red-haired no­mads to the north of the peace­ful set­tle­ments of the Yel­low River, and there still re­main paint­ings which faith­fully re­cord the pres­ence of both the blond-And­ite and the brunet-Mon­go­lian types in the Tarim basin of long ago.

79:6.5Twenty thou­sand years ago the an­ces­tors of the Chi­nese had built up a dozen strong cen­ters of prim­i­tive cul­ture and learn­ing, es­pe­cially along the Yel­low River and the Yangtze. And now these cen­ters be­gan to be re­in­forced by the ar­rival of a steady stream of su­pe­rior blended peo­ples from Sinkiang and Ti­bet. The mi­gra­tion from Ti­bet to the Yangtze val­ley was not so ex­ten­sive as in the north, nei­ther were the Ti­betan cen­ters so ad­vanced as those of the Tarim basin. But both move­ments car­ried a cer­tain amount of And­ite blood east­ward to the river set­tle­ments.

Onward

Cited alongside: Tibet, Yellow River, Sinkiang