The Oxus Civilization, the Kingdom that Vanished

The high Bronze Age saw the first emergence of complex cultures. Successive innovations in agriculture had produced a food surplus, perhaps the first meaningful one in history, and these foodstuffs could support the first cities.

These complex urban centers appeared in four different places, developing alongside each other essentially at the same time along what would become the Silk Road. From east to west these were the Chinese of the Yellow River, the Harappans of the Indus Valley, the Sumerians and other Mesopotamians who lived between the Tigris and Euphrates, and the mighty Egyptians.

There were many differences between these proto-urbanites and the first complex cultures they built for themselves, but stripping away the trappings we can see that there was also a lot that they had in common. All four cultures were riverine, all four chose areas of maximum fertility for their centers, all four developed complex systems of people management to deal with their population, all four had complex caste structures.

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But these four did not, in fact, stand alone. There was a fifth ancient civilization, founded on another river, who are largely forgotten today. This is the Oxus Civilization, also known as the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex.

The reasons for its relative obscurity are easy to understand. The Oxus were entirely unknown before the 1970s, and all research was hidden behind the Iron Curtain until the fall of the Soviet superpower in the early 1990s. Much research into this culture is still untranslated into English.

But that is not the only reason. The Oxus were unlike the other civilizations in that they existed for only a historical moment. They swept into their lands, along the Amu Darya or Oxus river, when they were entirely empty. They build their cities and their network there for 600 years, and then they vanished.

Who were the Oxus, and where did they go?

A Trading Powerhouse

In truth, the Oxus did not solely live along the Oxus river. Although they were first discovered there, they were more concentrated to the south, around the Murghab river delta.

Oxus territory lies within modern day Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, to the north of both the Harappans and the Mesopotamians. To their north lay the great nomad Andronovo, a mish mash of cultures across the centuries, horse warriors and chariot riders, lords of the steppe. To the south lay the Harappans and the Mesopotamians.

This put the Oxus in an advantageous position for one thing: trade. Traces of this network can be found in the trade goods and other materials found in the other four civilizations. Bronze made in Mesopotamia used tin traded from the Oxus, and their artifacts have been found as far as Egypt and China.

So where did they come from? The territory on which they settled appears to have been unused beforehand, this civilization with its sophisticated agriculture and crafting workshops just appeared out of nowhere.

Some believe that the Oxus came from the West and the mountains of the Caspian Sea, driven by the discovery of how to exploit the fertile plains which lay uninhabited to their north. But this is a supposition only: all we can say is that there was no previous civilization where they settled, and their culture appears to have come from nowhere.

By 2400 BC they were established in the region, and by 2250 BC at the height of the Middle Bronze Age they were a civilization of the first rank. They build cities and temple complexes with thick walls of stone, produced complex bronze agricultural tools for their irrigated farms, and produced stunning works of art, perhaps most notably the “Bactrian princesses” with their elaborate and enormous clothing.

These tell us much, but there is more about the Oxus that is entirely mysterious. One tiny seal aside, they seem to have been without writing, and in that silence lies an enormous amount about how they saw themselves and the inner workings of their culture.

The Andronovo to the north loved horses, for example. Did the Oxus hold them in the same high regard? A burial of a foal pulling a cart of wood and bronze in a high-ranking Oxus tomb would seem to confirm this, and statues of horses have also been found in the same tomb complex.

This complex has been described as “Royal” and is found at what appears to be the largest Oxus city, Gonur Depe. This was a magnificent Bronze Age city, divided into three sections over 55 hectares, each with something to tell about the Oxus.

The first is a necropolis containing over 3,000 graves, the very size of which tells of the large urban center and population which existed here. The second, Gonur South, is an enormous monumental temple surrounded by ancillary buildings and protected by two enormous sets of walls. This temple is unfinished but at its heart, protected by a huge fortress, was a small and strange cruciform shrine with twelve towers. 

But the third, largest section of Gonur Depe is also the most interesting. Gonur North has many temples and also boasts impressive walls. And, in the very center of this section, lies a monumental palace complex, home to the kings and queens of the Oxus.

The “Royal” necropolis stands close by, and it is from here that the greatest cultural finds have been made. Stunning statuary in gold, jewelry made of precious stones and exotic goods such as elephant ivory from the Harappans has been found here. This was a rich culture.

And so they remained for some 600 years, from 2250 BC to around 1600 BC before they melted away. No daughter civilization lived in the strongholds of the Oxus, no successors built their own culture on these sites. The lands of the Oxus, so empty before their arrival, were once again abandoned after the Oxus were gone.

Where did they go? Well, we don’t quite know. Later Oxus society interacted more and more with the Andronovo to the north, and they may have been absorbed into these peoples: cultures such as the later Sintashta with their chariots may have Oxus links.

But all that remains of the Oxus now are their ruins and their artifacts. Who these people were, how they came to be among the very first civilizations, and where they ultimately went are all unanswered questions. 

Header Image: The Oxus statue has been tentatively described as a “monster with trumpet” but the truth is we know almost nothing about this lost civilization. Source: PHGCOM / CC BY-SA 4.0.