In Mountains Along Silk Road, 'an Amazing Treasure Trove'

An archaeologist says "the history of Central Asia is now changing" with the discovery of two lost medieval cities, some three miles apart, in the mountains along the Silk Road, per the BBC. The Silk Road was a series of trade networks stretching from China to Venice, through which people, goods, and ideas flowed between the second century BC and the 15th century AD. Experts previously believed the routes only passed through lowlands. But "they were dragging the caravans to the mountains," concludes Farhod Maksudov, director of Uzbekistan's National Center of Archaeology, per the New York Times. The two cities at a crossroads of the routes sit some 6,600 feet and 7,200 feet above sea level in Uzbekistan's Malguzar Mountains, "an altitude thought to be inhospitable even today," per the BBC.

Researchers believe both cities, Tugunbulak and Tashbulak, were active between the 8th and 11th centuries. Researchers first uncovered pottery shards and other evidence of Tashbulak in 2011. Years later, they encountered a local forestry administrator who reported seeing similar ceramics in his backyard. He was "living on a huge city," which turned out to be Tugunbulak, Washington University archaeologist Michael Frachetti tells the BBC. In 2022, researchers peeled back the layers of the two cities using the remote sensing system LiDAR, finding walls, guard towers, and other fortifications. They say Tugunbulak, 10 times larger than Tashbulak at almost 300 acres, would've been one of the largest cities in central Asia during the period, per Deutsche Welle.

Though digs are only just beginning, the sites have also turned up coins and jewelry, per the Times. "What an amazing treasure trove," Peter Frankopan, a Silk Road expert at Oxford University who was not involved in the research, tells the BBC. This "shows the deep interconnections criss-crossing Asia, as well as the links between exploitation of natural resources more than a millennium ago." Researchers, who also found production kilns, believe residents may have used the mountains' strong winds to build fires needed to smelt the region's iron cores, perhaps for weapons manufacturing. However, this may have led to the felling of a juniper forest, leaving the environment at risk from flash floods and avalanches, says Maksudov, author of a study published Wednesday in Nature. (More archaeology stories.)