The Kelteminar culture (5500–3500

BCE Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) are year notations for the Gregorian calendar (and its predecessor, the Julian calendar), the world's most widely used calendar era. Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the or ...

) was a

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several p ...

archaeological culture of

sedentary Sedentary lifestyle is a lifestyle type, in which one is physically inactive and does little or no physical movement and or exercise. A person living a sedentary lifestyle is often sitting or lying down while engaged in an activity like soci ...

fishermen occupying the semi-desert and desert areas of the

Karakum Karakum may refer to: *Karakum Desert, a desert in Central Asia * ''Karakum'' (film), a 1994 Turkmen film *Karakum Canal, Turkmenistan * Karakum District, Turkmenistan See also * Karakoram, a large mountain range spanning the borders of India, Pak ...

and Kyzyl Kum deserts and the deltas of the

Amu Darya The Amu Darya, tk, Amyderýa/ uz, Amudaryo// tg, Амударё, Amudaryo ps, , tr, Ceyhun / Amu Derya grc, Ὦξος, Ôxos (also called the Amu, Amo River and historically known by its Latin name or Greek ) is a major river in Central Asi ...

and

Zeravshan Zarafshon ( uz, Zarafshon / Зарафшон, fa, زرافشان) is a city in the center of Uzbekistan's Navoiy Region. Administratively, it is a district-level city, that includes the urban-type settlement Muruntau. It has an area of and it ...

rivers in the territories of ancient

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...

Turkmenistan Turkmenistan ( or ; tk, Türkmenistan / Түркменистан, ) is a country located in Central Asia, bordered by Kazakhstan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, east and northeast, Afghanistan to the southeast, Iran to the sout ...

, and

Uzbekistan Uzbekistan (, ; uz, Ozbekiston, italic=yes / , ; russian: Узбекистан), officially the Republic of Uzbekistan ( uz, Ozbekiston Respublikasi, italic=yes / ; russian: Республика Узбекистан), is a doubly landlocked co ...

. The culture was discovered and first excavated in 1939 by the ''USSR Chorasmian Archaeological and Ethnographic Expedition'' under leadership of S.P. Tolstoy, who first described it. It is named after a site of the same name. The Kelteminar culture was replaced by the Tazabagyab culture. The Kelteminar people practised a mobile hunting, gathering and fishing subsistence system. Over time, they adopted stockbreeding. With the Late Glacial warming, up to the Atlantic Phase of the Post-Glacial Optimum, Mesolithic groups moved north into this area from the Hissar (6000–4000 BCE). These groups brought with them the bow and arrow and the

dog The dog (''Canis familiaris'' or ''Canis lupus familiaris'') is a domesticated descendant of the wolf. Also called the domestic dog, it is derived from the extinct Pleistocene wolf, and the modern wolf is the dog's nearest living relative. Do ...

, elements of what

Kent Flannery Kent Vaughn Flannery (born 1934) is a North American archaeologist who has conducted and published extensive research on the pre-Columbian cultures and civilizations of Mesoamerica, and in particular those of central and southern Mexico. He has a ...

has called the "broad-spectrum revolution". Russian scientists hold that Kelteminar culture is related to the

Pit–Comb Ware culture The Comb Ceramic culture or Pit-Comb Ware culture, often abbreviated as CCC or PCW, was a northeast European culture characterised by its Pit–Comb Ware. It existed from around 4200 BCE to around 2000 BCE. The bearers of the Comb Ceramic cultu ...

and belonged to a

Finnic people The Finnic or Fennic peoples, sometimes simply called Finns, are the nations who speak languages traditionally classified in the Finnic (now commonly '' Finno-Permic'') language family, and which are thought to have originated in the region of ...

.Yablonsky L.T. ''Kelteminar craniology. Intra-group analysis''//Soviet Ethnography, Moscow, USSR Academy of Sciences, 1985, No 2. pp. 127-140 The Kelteminar people lived in huge houses (size 24m x 17m and height 10m), which housed the whole tribal community of about 100-120 people. They adorned themselves with beads made of shells. They manufactured stone axes and miniature trapezoidal flint arrowheads. For cooking, they used clay vessels produced without the

potter's wheel In pottery, a potter's wheel is a machine used in the shaping (known as throwing) of clay into round ceramic ware. The wheel may also be used during the process of trimming excess clay from leather-hard dried ware that is stiff but malleable, a ...

. The Kelteminar economy was based on sedentary fishing and hunting.

References

Literature

Tolstov S.P. ''Following ancient Horesm civilization'', Part 2. Ch. 5 (''In Russian'')Rtveladze E. ''Civilizations, nations, cultures of Central Asia'', Tashkent, 2005 (''In Russian'')
{dead link, date=December 2017 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes
''Kelteminar Culture Flourishes in Central Asia''
Archaeological cultures of Central Asia Neolithic cultures of Asia Finno-Ugric archaeological cultures Archaeological cultures in Kazakhstan Archaeological cultures in Turkmenistan Archaeological cultures in Uzbekistan Hunter-gatherers of Asia