Scythians Descend on Central Asia
WHEN I WAS a junior world coin collector, back in the days of the Craig catalog, there was only “Central Asia.” There one would find the 19th century coins of the Emirs of Bukhara and so forth, before they were conquered by Russia. The coins weren’t available, though. They were locked in the Soviet Union.
It was a lively place, Central Asia. People grew crops there, created towns, and traded.
Bukhara, now in Uzbekistan, was one of the great cities even 2,000 years ago along with Samarkand and Tashkent, also in Uzbekistan. Tajikistan is shaped like a fist making a thumb’s up sign. Uzbekistan surrounds the thumb on three sides.
The Silk Road was not a single route, people went east or west and made decisions to go north or south along the way.
Russian furs went down to Constantinople, to Qonya in Anatolia, then Aleppo, where the frankincense and myrrh of Arabia were picked up, then Baghdad. At Tabriz, in Iran, you go north or south. The northern route, above the Pamirs and the Himalayas, goes straight to China. The southern route goes through Afghanistan and gave the option of going to India.
The routes were stable because the territorial governments, and however much they charged in tolls, kept the trails safe.
They were trails, not roads since there were no wheeled vehicles. You walked, with your stuff on your back, or packed on animals that you rented from someone. You had
