The Dzungarian Gate, also known as the Altai Gap, is a geographically and historically significant mountain pass between Central Asia and China. It has been described as the "one and only gateway in the mountain-wall which stretches from China to Afghanistan, over a distance of ."3,000 miles equal to about 4,800 kilometers. The exact distance from where to where to which Carruthers is referring is unclear. Given its association with details in a story related by Herodotus, it has been linked to the location of legendary Hyperborea.
The Dzungarian Gate (; Jetısu qaqpasy or Жоңғар қақпасы Joñğar qaqpasy) is a straight valley which penetrates the Dzungarian Alatau mountain range along the border between Kazakhstan and Xinjiang, China. It currently serves as a railway corridor between China and the West. Historically, it has been noted as a convenient pass suitable for riders on horseback between the western Eurasian steppe and lands further east, and for its fierce and almost constant winds.Douglas Carruthers, Unknown Mongolia: A Record of Travel and Exploration in North-West Mongolia p415
In his Histories, Herodotus relates travelers' reports of a land in the northeast where griffins guard gold and where the North Wind issues from a mountain cave. Given the parallels between Herodotus' story and modern reports,Adrienne Mayor, Peter Dodson, The first fossil hunters: paleontology in Greek and Roman times, Princeton University Press, 2001, p. 27 (See also map, p. 28)"Considering that Pliny, referring to Aristeas, says that the Arimaspeans lived very near 'the Earth's gate' and the 'cave of the North Wind', we must seek them somewhere near the Dzungarian Gate, and not in the Urals or Tibet." Ildikó Lehtinen, Traces of the Central Asian culture in the North: Finnish-Soviet Joint Scientific Symposium held in Hanasaari, Espoo, 14–21 January 1985 Suomalais-ugrilainen Seura, 1986 p180 scholars such as Carl Ruck, J.D.P. BoltonBolton, J.D.P. (1962). Aristeas of Proconnesus and Ildikó Lehtinen"Considering that Pliny, referring to Aristeas, says that the Arimaspeans lived very near 'the Earth's gate' and the 'cave of the North Wind', we must seek them somewhere near the Dzungarian Gate, and not in the Urals or Tibet." Ildikó Lehtinen, Traces of the Central Asian culture in the North: Finnish-Soviet Joint Scientific Symposium held in Hanasaari, Espoo, pp. 14–21 January 1985 Suomalais-ugrilainen Seura, 1986 p180 have speculated on a connection between the Dzungarian Gate and the home of Boreas, the North Wind of Greek mythology, with legend describing the people who live on the other side of this home of the North Wind as a peaceful, civilized people who eat grain and live by the sea.
Geography The windswept valley of the Dzungarian Gate, wide at its narrowest, is located between Lake Alakol to the northwest, part of the Balkhash-Alakol Basin in Kazakhstan, and Ebinur Lake () to the southeast in China.Paul E. Lydolph, Climates of the Soviet Union, Elsevier Scientific Pub. Co., 1977, p. 174 At its lowest, the floor of the valley lies at about elevation, while the surrounding peaks of the Dzungarian Alatau range reach about to the northeast and to the southwest.
Douglas Carruthers, who explored the area in the first decade of the 20th century, writes:The Dzungarian Gate is a defile about six miles wide at its narrowest point, and forty-six miles long, connecting Southern Siberia with Dzungaria. It forms a natural pathway from the plateau of Mongolia to the great plain of North-western Asia, and is the one and only gateway in the mountain-wall which stretches from Manchuria to Afghanistan, over a distance of three thousand miles. On the west, the Ala-tau drops suddenly from peaks above snow-line to the level of the floor of the depression, 700 feet above the level of the ocean,—the lowest altitude in the inland basins of Central Asia, with the exception of the Turfan depression, which is actually below sea-level.
Geologically, the valley of Dzungarian Gate was created by the active strike-slip Dzungar fault system. In strike-slip faults the blocks slide past each other laterally, and in this case they do so in a counter-clockwise direction or dextrally, similar to the famous San Andreas Fault.
Remarking on it as a geological and physical phenomenon, Carruthers continues:[T]he Dzungarian Gate is as unusual as that of the Jordan depression. They are both examples of a rift-valley caused by the movement of the earth's crust, not by the action of water. This valley once formed the connecting link between the drainage of Dzungaria and that of Southern Siberia. The chain of lakes at either end of the valley (Balkash, Ala Kul, Ebi Nor, etc.), are the remains of the great Asiatic Mediterranean Sea; if their waters were to rise a few hundred feet they would break through the Gate, flooding the plains to the north and south.Douglas Carruthers, Unknown Mongolia: A Record of Travel and Exploration in North-West Mongolia p. 416–417
Noting that, "In prehistoric days the Dzungarian Gate must have presented a still more wonderful sight" when it "formed a narrow strait joining the Dzungarian inlet with the vast seas of Western Siberia,"Douglas Carruthers, Unknown Mongolia: A Record of Travel and Exploration in North-West Mongolia p417 Carruthers quotes the British journalist and MP, Morgan Philips Price, with whom he travelled:Douglas Carruthers, Unknown Mongolia: A Record of Travel and Exploration in North-West Mongolia pp. 417–418 "This was probably in the recent Quaternary and also in the Tertiary times. Deep deposits of fine mud, now carved out by streams into rolling downs, are to be seen on the north side of the Barlik Mountains. There deposits containing marine shells, which will probably prove to be Quaternary, rise to the altitude of . Near the Barlik Range there is abundant evidence of marine glaciation,—the debris of icebergs from a frozen sea. Nearer to the gorge the muddeposits begin; they contain seams of pebbles,—falsebedded, showing that the currents and tides must have been strong... . "One can picture the Dzungarian Gate in the Ice Age: a narrow strait through which the Arctic-AraloCaspian Sea ebbed and flowed into the seas of Central Asia, scoured by icebergs descending from ancient glaciers on the Ala-tau and Barlik Mountains and forested perhaps down to the water's edge,—not unlike the Straits of Belle Isle at the present day. Now a change has been wrought; earth-movement has drained the sea. But away to the north there still remain the lakes of Ala Kul, Sasik Kul, and Balkash, and on the south Ebi Nor,—pools left in the desert—all that remains of the great icy sea. The alluvial plains, once its bed, are now covered by desert grasses, while the forest clings only to the shaded slopes and gullies on the northern slopes of the mountains.Price's brief summary of his observations, as published in the Geographical Journal for February 1911
History
Origins and the Silk Road
One of the earliest mentions of the Dzungaria region dates to when Emperor Wu of Han (reigning 141–87 BCE), dispatched the Han Chinese diplomat Zhang Qian to investigate lands to the west. The northernmost Silk Road trackway, about in length, connected the ancient Chinese capital of Xi'an to the west over the Wushao Ling Pass to Wuwei and emerged in Kashgar before linking to ancient Parthia.
Dzungaria is named after a Mongolian kingdom which existed in Central Asia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It derived its name from the Dzungars, who were so called because they formed the left wing (züün, left; gar, hand) of the Mongolian army, the self-named Oirats. It was raised to its greatest prominence by Galdan (also known as Galdan Boshigtu Khan) in the latter half of the 17th century, who made repeated incursions on the territory of the Kazakh state, until Galdan was wiped out by the Qing government in about 1757–1759. It played an important part in the history of Mongolia and the great westward Mongolian migrations. After 1761 its territory fell mostly to the Qing dynasty (Xinjiang and north-western Mongolia) and partly to Russian Turkestan (earlier the Kazakh state provinces of Semirechye- Jetysu and Irtysh river).
A traveler going west from China must go either north of the Tian Shan through Dzungaria or south of the Tian Shan through the Tarim Basin. Trade usually took the southern route and migrations the northern. This is most likely because the Tarim leads to the Ferghana Valley and Iran, while Dzungaria leads only to the open steppe. The difficulty with the southern route was the high mountains between the Tarim and Ferghana. There is also another reason. The Taklamakan Desert of the Tarim is too dry to support much grass, and therefore lacked nomads likely to rob caravans. Its inhabitants lived mostly in oases formed where rivers ran out of the mountains into the desert. These were inhabited by peasants who were unwarlike and merchants who had an interest in keeping trade running smoothly. On the other hand, Dzungaria had a fair amount of grass, few towns to base soldiers in and no significant mountain barriers to the west. Therefore, trade went south and migrations north.The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia René Grousset Rutgers University Press, 1970 p. xxii,
Modern development
The Chinese city of Alashankou lies on the eastern end of the valley in the Börtala Mongol Autonomous Prefecture of Xinjiang. To the west, in the Almaty Province of Kazakhstan, lies its smaller counterpart, Dostyk, or Druzhba in Russian.
Modern development of the pass for its economic potential was delayed by political considerations. An agreement between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China to connect Kazakhstan with Western China by rail had been reached in 1954. On the Soviet side, the railway reached the border town of Druzhba (Dostyk) (whose names, both Russian and Kazakh, mean 'friendship') in 1959. On the Chinese side, however, the westward construction of the Lanzhou-Xinjiang railway was stopped once it reached Urumqi in 1962. Due to the Sino-Soviet Split, the border town remained a sleepy backwater for some 30 years, until the Alashankou railway station was finally completed on September 12, 1990. Since the 2010s, freight trains to Russia, Germany or Poland are sent over the pass.
Hyperborean connection
The Dzungarian Gate has been noted in modern history as the most convenient pass for horseback riders between the western Eurasian steppe and lands further east, and for its fierce and almost constant winds.Douglas Carruthers, Unknown Mongolia: A Record of Travel and Exploration in North-West Mongolia p. 415 The area has also become known for its gold deposits and for producing prodigious numbers of dinosaur fossils, especially Protoceratops. Given that Herodotus relates a story of a traveller to the East who visited a land where griffins guard gold and east of which live the Hyperboreans, modern scholars have theorized that the Dzungarian Gate may be the real-world location of the home of Boreas, the North Wind of Greek Legend.Given certain historical clues and parallels in legends, scholars like Carl Ruck have speculated on a connection between the Dzungarian Gate and the home of Boreas, the North Wind of Greek mythology. Difficulties and conflations, such as the claim that they sleep six months out of the year, remain. Yet the Hyperboreans, who live beyond the home of the North Wind have been identified by some as the Chinese. J. P. Mallory and Victor H. Mair, The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West, Thames & Hudson, 2000, p. 44