Kelteminar culture

The Kelteminar culture (5500–3500 BCE)[1] was a Neolithic archaeological culture of sedentary fishermen occupying the semi-desert and desert areas of the Karakum and Kyzyl Kum deserts and the deltas of the Amu Darya and Zeravshan rivers[2] in the territories of ancient Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

[3] The culture was discovered and first excavated in 1939 by the USSR Chorasmian Archaeological and Ethnographic Expedition under leadership of S.P.

The Kelteminar people practised a mobile hunting, gathering and fishing subsistence system.

With the Late Glacial warming, up to the Atlantic Phase of the Post-Glacial Optimum, Mesolithic groups moved north into this area from the Hissar (6000–4000 BCE).

These groups brought with them the bow and arrow and the dog, elements of what Kent Flannery[4] has called the "broad-spectrum revolution".