Lost Asian Civilization Discovered in the 1990’s in Central Asia & Afghanistan. It started around 3,000 BC and its last remnants were destroyed by the Mongolian invasion in the 1200s.
I have always loved lost civilizations. I even visited the remains of Indus Valley Civilization in Mohenjo-Daro India. We do not know who these people were. Now it appears that another River Civilization thrived around the rivers leading from the Himalayas north to the Aral Sea. These people built sophisticated hydraulic works and mined the Tin that fueled Mesopotamia’s Bronze age. in the 2,000s BC. The main archeology sites were uncovered by Soviet Archeologists in the 1970’s, but remained unknown in the West until translation in the 1990’s. as you can see from the included map, this area would later become the Satrap of Bactria and includes the major silk route cities. Interestingly Chinese civilization arose 500 later than Bactria around 2,500 BC. I hypothesize that Bactria was a conduit for the transmission of Mesopotamian culture into China. Before you scoff, realize that the silk route trade would later be the conduit for Buddhism, Manichaean Thought, Christianity, and Islam into China. We know next to nothing about the first Bactrians, but we do know about Alexander’s campaigns to subdue Bactria. He left behind massive fortresses and ten,thousand Greek Mercenaries who he banished there. The Greek-Bactrian kingdom lasted for a couple of centuries and played a pivotal role in fusing Indian Buddhism and Greek art and probably Philosophy. Their written artifacts barely survive, but we do know that in the 250’s two erudite greek scholars wrote greek language versions of Buddhist propaganda using using terms and phrases from Plato and Pythagorus. This greek culture became a center of Buddhist thought and missionary work. Bactria is where the jewish-christian prophet Mani went to learn Buddhism around 250 AD. Zarathustra is said to be born here. The sufi Movement is rooted here, this is the center from which the Barmakids translated Sanskrit texts into Arabic in the 700’s. This is either the birthplace of Mahayana Buddhism or one of the birthplaces around. This knew form of Buddhism arose around 100 AD and stressed Gnostic salvation. This is the form of Buddhism that we know as Tibetan, Zen and Holy Land, rather than the Puritan Self-Denial of the Thai and Ceylonese arhats. This form became big on the Silk Road and was then reintroduced into India. I would argue that it is a syncretic Buddhism that mixed with the the gnostic Christianity Zoroastrianism and (probably) Neoplatonism that was brewing in this cauldron of cultural diffusion. Zen Buddhism traces its lineage to a mythical monk Bodhidharma from the Silk Route around 500 AD who founded the Shao Lin Monastery in China. Bodhidharma was thus a missionary of Silk Road culture, which was immersed in Mani’s gnostic ideas of immediate illumination, a distinctly zoroastrian concept which also made its way into Kabbalah, Freemasonry, Pietism, and Pentecostalism to name but a few. A complete account would talk about the renaissance of Islamic Thought in this area around the year 1000 and talk about the rise of the Sufis. This is an amazing crossroads of civilization where the regions of India, The Near East and China have always met. As we learn to write global histories instead of National Histories we uncover this permanent conduit of Cultural Mutation and Mystical Philosophy.
