Hey everyone, welcome back.

Las La Montgomery here with China History Podcast, episode 248, part 5 of this history of Xinjiang series,

still early in the game.

The people living out in these oasis cities and kingdoms at this time in its history are still predominantly

Indo-European and Indo-irronic people, as it had been for the past several thousand years. The Turks haven't

shown up yet. And Islam, the Prophet won't be born till 570 towards the end of

the Northern and Southern dynasties period.

But don't worry, Islam will make its way to the basins of Xinjiang and that'll be it

for Buddhism and Manicheism in this part of the world.

Last time we took a quick glance at a few of the kingdoms of the southern

and eastern part of the Tarum Basin and

as advertised last episode we're going to finish off with one more

important kingdom and then we'll move on to the arrival of the Gurk Turks.

But before we do that let me just add something I wanted to try and squeeze in last episode in part four but decided

to let it slide till this one.

This wasn't exclusive to Turpan, but it was one other thing about the place that I found

terribly interesting and worth mentioning.

This was the famous Kares Canal System they invented all those centuries ago, way before

Jiang Tian and the Han Chinese or even the Shionnu.

I mentioned these Kannats or Kares and the Old Silk Road series I did from way back when.

These Kares or Kannats were these underground aqueducts that were first designed by Iranian engineers as much as 3,000 years

ago. Turpan was a thriving city but they didn't have any of the

...