Ancient site of hunters discovered in Khorezm

Good news from Uzbekistan:

In Khorezm, the centenary of Sergey Tolstov, a discoverer of ancient Khorezm civilization, is marked this year, Jahon news agency reported quoting Business Partner newspaper.

In 1937, he was charged to head an archeological-ethnographic expedition to Khorezm. Sergey Tolstov spent three decades of his life, investigating the history of this ancient land.

His passion for studying Khorezm's architectural monuments made him to cross the Usturt Plateau, loose sand-hills and uninhabited deserts.

Sergey Tolstov is appraised for establishing an open-sky museum in the ancient city of Khiva - Ichan-kala, an architectural national reserve, where the tens of centuries-old cultural monuments and artifacts are protected by the state.

Over 300 of his scholarly works o­n archeology and history of ancient Khorezm were published in many parts of the world, including the US, Great Britain, and Germany. The majority of his manuscripts are now stored in the Republic of Karakalpakstan and the Tashauz Province of Turkmenistan.

Archeologists at the Khiva branch of the Samarkand Archeological Institute named after Jakhya Gulamov have made a sort of gift to Tolstov's 100th anniversary. During their excavation works in Kumbuz-tepa, near the town of Khazarasp, they had unearthed a Bronze Age site of hunters and cattle-breeders. Called Sharofat, the site is no less than 3,500 years old, according to experts.

The archeological-ethnographic complex expedition founded by Sergey Tolstov has been carrying out successful large-scale research into the history, archeology and ethnography of Central Asian peoples for over the span of seven decades now.

The fruitful activity led by the famous Khorezm expedition enabled local scientists to address the broad spectrum of the region's historical, ethnographic and archeological problems. Many scholarly works, monographs and brochures they have created as a result have made a great scientific contribution.

A total of 63 monuments of Zoroastrianism, an extinct religion of the remote past, have been preserved up to the present day across the globe, including Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Uzbekistan is a home to 38 of them, of which 17 monuments are located in the Khorezm oasis.