For at least 10,000 years and possibly as many as 40,000, homo sapiens has found this an amenable spot. If Silk Route trade made it rich in historic times, nature was the provider in prehistoric ones: mountain streams running off the northern slopes of the Zerafshan range supported trees which grew nuts and berries which in turn supported wild fowl and other animals. Everything that Paleolithic man could wish for was here, and his (or rather her, for they were women's) jaw and thighbones were discovered in a former children's park in Samarkand in 1937. 

Neolithic man was altogether more settled and sophisticated, hunting gazelles and wild bulls with bows and arrows, but also breeding sheep and goats on wide terraces above the Sazagan river south-west of modern Samarkand. Fine stone arrow heads and other items dating from between 6000 and 4000 Be were discovered at four sites along the river between 1966 and 1972.  

The oldest evidence of urban settlement on the territory of Samarkand is a collection of jewellery from a Bronze-Age burial ground beside the River Slab, which still runs grubbily along the eastern edge of the Afrasiab site. The remains of an outer city wall here have been dated around 1500 Be, but Samarkand proper is generally accepted to be 2500 years old, and Afrasiab was its first name.  

Afrasiab may have been the first Sogdian king, Sogdiana being the land between the Oxus (Amu Daryal and Jaxartes (Syr Darya) rivers, or he may have existed only in an epic poem called 'Shakhname', as king of what became the northern Persian satrapy of Turan. Alternatively the word may not refer to a person at all and be derived instead from the Tajik word parsiab, meaning 'over the Slab (black river)'. Either way, Afrasiab the place is a short walk east of the cente of modern Samarkand. In its heyday it covered 800 hectares. The modern site covers 300 hectares, 96 per cent of which have not been touched by builders or archaeologists since they were trampled and torched by Genghts Khan's horsemen in 1220.  

By the 4th century Be Afrasiab was the major urban center of Sogdiana, famous for its size and general magnificence. Marauders were for the most part kept at bay by a city wall 14 km long and, in one surviving section, 13 m high. But in 329 Be the city faced the greatest marauder of his and possibly of all time. Alexander the Great crossed the Hindu Kush in the spring of that year and took Samarkand without a struggle. But Spitamen, the local Sogdian ruler, led a spirited rebellion that delayed the Greek conquest by 18 frustrating months, and ended only with Spitamen's assassination by his own followers.  

Having finally taken the city Alexander became arrogant. On the feast of Dionysus he made sacrifices to Castor and Pollux, and claimed to be descended, like them, from Zeus. Some courtiers took this as a cue for flattery and likened him to Hercules, but his old friend Cleitus decided to cut him down to size. Emboldened by drink, he told Alexander he was not the equal of his own father Philip, let alone of Hercules. Alexander ran him through with a spear-and was filled with remorse for the remaining five years of his life.  

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