The great river civilization of the Oxus is one of the forgotten jewels of the ancient world. In history, this grand arterial 1,500-mile waterway was always seen as the natural frontier between the northern provinces of the Iranian empires and the outer Turanian lands. It was for centuries central to Achaemenid and later Persian power. But, as the author shows, it has a prehistory which goes very much further back: and a succession of skilled yet still elusive Bronze Age cultures flourished here well before the rise of Cyrus the Great in the 6th century BCE.

This richly illustrated...