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State of the Environment in Bishkek 2001
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Historical background

Ancient times. The appearance of man on the territory where the city is located now dates back to extreme antiquity. The findings of stone tools near the Alamedin Hydroelectric Power Plant are an evidence of the fact that primitive people inhabited this area in the 5th to 4th millennium B.C.
At the end of the 2nd millennium B.C. the modern territory of the city was inhabited by Bronze Age tribes. They were engaged in pastoral livestock raising, land cultivation, pottery, and metal working.

                           The beginning of the Iron Age saw the formation of tribal unions on the territory of Kyrgyzstan: that of Sacae (7th – 3rd century B.C.) and Wusun (3rd century B.C. – 5th century A.D.) Their economy was based on migrating livestock breeding. Sacae and Wusun tribes inhabited the banks of the rivers, what was evidenced by burial mounds, which have been preserved within the city limits till recently. The Wusun were well acquainted with land cultivation, too.                                                              

      The Middle Ages. The basins of the Alamedin and the Ala Archa rivers were inhabited by nomadic and settled agricultural population. The monuments of nomadic Turks were burial mounds and stone statues. Settled population lived in towns. For about two thousand years caravans moved along the Great Silk Road . Nothing could stop their measured steps. The world was shaken by bloody wars and devastating epidemics. There came into life peoples and states and then they disappeared. Even the Amu Darya changed its course and sources; the Aral Sea changed its outline and only the Silk Road remained unchanged.                                       

        One of the largest medieval towns was the so-called Pishpek site of an ancient settlement (7th – 12th century) which occupied an area of about 25-30 sq km (the area of the railway station Pishpek and the former villages Klyuchevoye and Kyzyl Asker) and had a well-developed system of fortifications. Another ancient town, later became known as Kuznechnaya Krepost site, was situated in the basin of the Alamedin river.

       Among the finds discovered on these sites there are 4 bronze trunks decorated with plant and epigraphic patterns, a bronze statuette representing a figure with a human head and an animal body, a large quantity of earthenware, baked bricks, and other things. The city existed in the 8th to the early 13th century. In the period of the Tatar and Mongol invasion it fell into decay; some time later it revived and life in it continued till the 15th century. Then the town goes into utter desolation.            After the 15th century, nomadic encampments of the Kyrgyz were set up periodically on the territory between the Alamedin and the Ala Archa rivers.

The Kokand khanate. Settled life on the territory between the two rivers was restored in 1825. The Chu valley was seized by Lyashker kushbegi, a military commander under the Kokand khan. The Kokanders built the fortress Pishpek near a caravan road to Tashkent.

            In 1862 the Kyrgyz living in the Chu valley set out against the Kokand conquerors. They besieged Pishpek and applied to the Russian authorities in Verny (now the city of Almaty) for assistance. The Pishpek fortress was taken by Russian troops and destroyed. In 1863, following the liquidation of the Kokand khanate power, the population of Kirghizia joined Russia on a voluntary basis.            

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This page was last updated: 29.11.01