The 7 Rivers civilization was not alone. It was surrounded — to the north, to the west, in the deserts of Central Asia — by an archipelago of small civilizations that shared with it gods, a language, spiritual practices and commercial routes. These are the civilizations that archaeologists call the Oasis Civilization, or the Karakum Civilization, or the Oxus Civilization.
In The Civilization of the 7 Rivers, I describe them thus: these small civilizations were the heirs of local shamanism and were characterized by their pacifism. Some of them were even led by women, which was far from common at the time.
Neighbours, sisters, and fellow travellers of the 7 Rivers civilization for more than a millennium.
The geography of the archipelago
The urban phase of the 7 Rivers civilization emerged about 5,500 years ago — at the same time as Egypt and Mesopotamia. And at the same time, other smaller civilizations flourished in a region stretching from northern Afghanistan to Turkmenistan and Iran: the Oasis Civilization in the Karakum Desert, and the Oxus Civilization in Afghanistan and Tajikistan.
City-states such as Mehrgarh already existed at this time and probably served as models for these new civilizations.
The Karakum Desert — one of the largest deserts in the world, covering most of present-day Turkmenistan — harboured, on the edges of its oases, a series of remarkable sites: Gonur Depe, Togolok-21, Dashly-3, discovered and excavated primarily by Soviet archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi from the 1970s onward. These sites reveal monumental buildings with fire chambers, ceremonial rooms, purification pools — a sacred architecture that resembles neither Mesopotamian palaces nor Egyptian temples, but rather evokes the collective ritual spaces of the 7 Rivers civilization.
Shamanism as common substrate
What distinguishes these small civilizations from the great powers of the time is their shamanic origin. They did not emerge from a conquering centralized power that imposed its structures on local populations. They grew from the practices and cosmologies of the nomadic and semi-nomadic populations that had inhabited these regions for millennia.
In The Civilization of the 7 Rivers, I underline that women were not stigmatized there — in agreement with other small civilizations like those of the Karakum and the Oxus. Some of these civilizations were even led by women.
This continuity between shamanism and nascent urban civilization is fundamental. In shamanism, the healer, the seer, the mediator between human and spiritual worlds can be a woman as much as a man. This ontological equality was transmitted into the first civilizations that emerged from it — including the 7 Rivers civilization itself, with its thirteen women rishis who composed hymns of the Rig Veda.
Shared spirituality: common gods and similar languages
In The Civilization of the 7 Rivers, I state it clearly: the Indian and Iranian civilizations had the same principal gods and spoke very similar languages. These civilizations shared a common spirituality and practised almost similar rituals.
Cultural and commercial exchanges between the 7 Rivers civilization and its Karakum neighbours are archaeologically documented. Indus seals have been found at Oasis Civilization sites. Iconographic motifs — the bull, the sacred tree, the figure in meditation posture — appear in both zones. And the caravan routes linking Mehrgarh to Gonur Depe, via Shortugai in northern Afghanistan, constituted one of the first intercontinental exchange networks in history.
Haoma, soma and their differences
What most clearly reveals both the kinship and the difference between the 7 Rivers civilization and its Karakum neighbours is the question of the sacred drink.
In The Civilization of the 7 Rivers, I document Viktor Sarianidi’s most revealing discovery during his excavations in Turkmenistan: in the Oasis Civilization of the Karakum, a mixture of ephedra, cannabis and poppy bud was found in ceremonial vessels. This is a psychoactive drink — powerful, capable of producing intense mystical experiences. It is the Iranian haoma, the cousin of the Vedic soma.
But — and this is a fundamental difference — ephedra contains ephedrine, an alkaloid from the amphetamine family. And cannabis, even mixed with opium from the poppy, contains no tryptamine.
In The Civilization of the 7 Rivers, I formulate this precisely: the amphetamine-cannabis mixture is well known. The effect is impressive and one can have powerful mystical experiences. But one remains in duality, whereas with soma, there is no duality. It is non-duality.
This distinction is not trivial. A society whose leaders regularly undergo the experience of non-duality — the complete dissolution of the Ego in the ocean of the Brahman — will function differently from a society whose leaders undergo intense ecstatic states but maintain their sense of “me” versus “the other.”
This perhaps explains why the Karakum civilizations — while peaceful and egalitarian compared to the great powers of the time — produced slightly more hierarchical structures than the 7 Rivers civilization. They had a sacred drink that was close, but not identical. A powerful shamanism, but not the non-duality of soma.
Gonur Depe: the temple-city of the Karakum
The most important site of the Oasis Civilization is Gonur Depe — “the blue hill” in Turkmen — excavated by Viktor Sarianidi from 1972 onward. It is a city of approximately 55 hectares, with a central palatial-ceremonial quarter surrounded by walls, purification pools, fire rooms, and residential areas organized around it.
Unlike the cities of the 7 Rivers civilization, Gonur Depe presents a more clearly centralized structure — a “palace-temple” at the centre. But unlike Mesopotamian or Egyptian palaces, this centre is not a glorious royal residence. It is a collective ceremonial space — a place of ritual, not of power.
The tombs found at Gonur Depe are revealing: they contain sacrificed animals, ceramics, bronze objects — funerary wealth greater than at 7 Rivers civilization sites, but without the ostentatious extravagance of the royal tombs at Ur or in Egypt. Somewhere between the radical egalitarianism of Mohenjo-Daro and the ostentatious hierarchy of Ur.
What the relationship with the Karakum tells us
The relationship between the 7 Rivers civilization and the small Karakum civilizations illustrates a principle I defend in The Civilization of the 7 Rivers: the peaceful, egalitarian civilization without oversized Ego is not an isolated anomaly. It is the natural product of certain spiritual and social conditions — conditions that several civilizations of this region shared to varying degrees.
These neighbours and sisters of the Karakum — Gonur, Togolok, Dashly — are not merely regional archaeological curiosities. They are proof that the model of the 7 Rivers civilization was not a utopia — it was a real possibility, realized in different forms, in a coherent geographical space, for centuries.
And their progressive disappearance — as commercial routes dried up, oases desiccated, populations migrated — mirrors the disappearance of the 7 Rivers civilization itself. Two cousins carried away by the same climate change, the same progressive drying up of water resources, the same collapse of the exchange networks that sustained them.
