Central Asia in the classical world (800 BC – AD 500). Greece, Rome, Persia, the Qin and Han, the Maya: the age of the great classical states and the written histories that describe them. These articles cover their rise, their wars and the everyday lives their ruins preserve.
Permafrost under the Pazyryk mounds in the Altai kept felt, wood, horses, tattooed skin, a wagon and a knotted carpet from the 5th to 4th century BC.
· 400 BCFound on a royal hunt in 1961 and dug by a French mission until 1978, Ai Khanoum in north Afghanistan held a Greek theater, gymnasium and Delphic maxims.
· 250 BCOstraca beside Old Nisa's Square House named a Parthian fortress Mithradatkert, where about fifty ivory rhyta and a disputed Round Hall survive.
· 200 BCFrom November 15, 1978, Viktor Sarianidi's team found six unlooted graves at Tillya Tepe, Afghanistan, with a Tiberius aureus and about 20,000 gold objects.
· AD 25Two walled-up rooms at Begram, 1937 and 1939, held Roman glass, Indian ivory and Han lacquer. Half went to Paris; 20 ivories returned to Kabul in 2012.
· AD 100A Bactrian stone unearthed in 1993 in Baghlan gives Kanishka's year one, four generations of Kushan kings, a switch from Greek and four Gangetic cities.
· AD 127
