Excerpt from Explorations in Turkestan: With an Account of the Basin of Eastern Persia and Sistan, Expedition of 1903The investigation was proposed because (1) there is a school that still holds the belief that central Asia is the region in which the great civilizations of the far East and of the West had their origins, and (2) because of the supposed occurrence in that region, in prehistoric times, of great changes in climate, resulting in the formation and recession of an extensive Asian Mediterranean, of which the Aral, Caspian, and Black seas are the principal remnants.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.