Throughout the centuries, the mythical Stone Tower has been a fascinating enigma for geographers, historians, and archaeologists worldwide. This location is mentioned in Claudius Ptolemy’s Geography as the midpoint on the Silk Road, the vast network of trade routes connecting Europe and Asia, facilitating the exchange of goods, cultures, and ideas.
The Stone Tower, known in Latin as Turris Lapidea and in Greek as Lithinos Pyrgos, represents one of the oldest mysteries in the history of geography and cartography. But where exactly was it located? Ptolemy provided the exact coordinates, yet it has never been found.
The Silk Road was a network of overland routes that, since the 2nd century BCE, connected the great civilizations of Asia and Europe. The Stone Tower marked a strategic and symbolic point within this vast network.
Ptolemy, the Greco-Egyptian geographer from Alexandria, wrote about this tower around the year 140 CE in his treatise Geography, a foundational document that endures as one of the oldest cartographic texts of classical antiquity.
Ptolemy notes that the Stone Tower was the most important landmark along the route, an essential stop for the caravans traveling the arduous and dangerous journey of the Silk Road. There, travelers could rest, resupply, and trade before continuing toward new destinations.
Ptolemy’s Geography consists of eight books, in which he mentions the Stone Tower up to ten times, a frequency that reflects the importance of this site at the time. In Book I, he describes it as a well-known and frequented landmark for travelers, following what had been previously written by Marinus of Tyre, a Greek geographer from the 1st century CE.
…we reduced in accordance with the appropriate correction both the distance from that crossing of the Euphrates to the Stone Tower, which amounts to 876 schoinoi or 26,280 stadia, as well as from the Stone Tower to Sera (China?), the metropolis of the Seres, a journey of seven months, or according to Marinus, 36,200 stadia measured along the same parallel [through Rhodes]. […] But the route from the Stone Tower to the Seres is subject to bad storms (for according to Marinus’ suppositions it falls along the parallels passing through the Hellespont and Byzantium), so that there must have also been numerous pauses in the journey.
Ptolemy, Geography I.2
However, he only mentions its coordinates once, placing it at latitude 43 and longitude 135 in his gradation system. But its exact location has always been a subject of debate among researchers and historians.
This is due to the difficulty in translating his coordinates to precise modern locations, as ancient cartographers relied on routes traced by caravans, whose positioning data were often imprecise.
From medieval times to the present, various locations have been proposed for the Stone Tower, with four main sites identified by researchers as possible candidates for its location.
In the 11th century, the scholar Al-Biruni suggested that the tower might be in the city of Tashkent in Uzbekistan, whose name means “stone castle or city” and bears linguistic symbolism with the term pyrgos, which in Greek means “tower” or “fortress.”
In the 19th century, researcher Joseph Hager supported this theory based on Tashkent’s proximity to Ptolemy’s mentioned latitude (43° north), although it is not an exact match, as it is actually at 41.2° north.
Another proposed location is Sulaiman-Too, a mountain in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, which also has great historical and cultural value. The mountainous landscape of Sulaiman-Too and its proximity to ancient routes have led modern researchers, like Claude Rapin and Riaz Dean, to think it could be the true site of the Stone Tower.
Meanwhile, British explorer Aurel Stein, who extensively traveled through Central Asia in the 20th century, argued that the Stone Tower might be in the area of the Karategin valley, in the village of Daraut-Kurgan in southwestern present-day Kyrgyzstan. According to Stein, the description Ptolemy provides matches the terrain characteristics of that area, where travelers had to ascend a gorge before reaching the supposed location of the tower.
Paul Bernard reached the same conclusion as Stein when he analyzed in 2005 the route taken by the caravan of Maes Titianus, who traveled along the Silk Road in the late 1st century CE. Ptolemy states that he reached the Stone Tower, once again based on the lost work of Marinus of Tyre:
Marinus tells us that a certain Macedonian named Maen, who was also called Titian, the son of a merchant and a merchant himself, recorded the length of his journey to the Stone Tower, though he did not reach Sera himself but sent another person there.
Ptolemy, Geography I.11
Tashkurgan, in Xinjiang, China, is another modern possibility. In 2014, researcher Irina Tupikova applied spherical trigonometry to reinterpret Ptolemy’s coordinates and concluded that Tashkurgan had a high probability of being the place described. This method, incorporating complex mathematical data, offered a new perspective in the debate over the Stone Tower’s location.
Another theory suggests that the Stone Tower might be the same as the Hormeterium or “trading station,” also mentioned in Ptolemy’s Geography. This site, identified by some scholars as the current Erkeshtam on the China-Kyrgyzstan border, would have been a strategic spot for trade and restocking supplies. However, Ptolemy states in his work that Erkeshtam is located five degrees east of the Tower.
Despite advances in positioning technology and archaeological research, the Stone Tower remains an unresolved mystery. Discovering its location would be of great importance not only for the study of ancient geography but also for locating other significant reference points in the region, similarly (and imprecisely) described by Ptolemy. It would even facilitate more focused archaeological research aimed at finding the material remains of the tower.
This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on October 30, 2024: La Torre de Piedra, el lugar que marcaba el punto medio de la Ruta de la Seda y cuyas coordenadas menciona Ptolomeo, nunca ha sido encontrada
SOURCES
Riaz Dean, The Stone Tower: Ptolemy, the Silk Road, and a 2,000-year-old Riddle
Igor’ Vasil’evich P’iankov, Maes Titianus, Ptolemy and the “Stone Tower” on the Great Silk Road
J. L. Berggren, Alexander Jones, Ptolemy’s Geography: An Annotated Translation of the Theoretical Chapters
Craig Benjamin, Empires of Ancient Eurasia: The First Silk Roads Era, 100 BCE – 250 CE
Wikipedia, Stone Tower (Ptolemy)
- Share on:
Discover more from LBV Magazine English Edition
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The Newly Formed Earth Was a Dry and Hot Place: A Theory Explains How Water Arrived Here and on Other Planets of the Solar System
A group of scientists from the Paris Observatory has proposed a new theory about how water arrived on Earth, a key question for understanding the emergence of life on our…
Analysis of Mesopotamian Texts in Akkadian Reveals How Emotions Were Experienced: Love Was Felt in the Knees
Love and emotions have been universal themes throughout human history, expressed in diverse ways but with commonalities across different cultures and eras. A fascinating recent study reveals that people in…
Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty, the chronicles of the Korean kingdom spanning five centuries, are the longest uninterrupted ones of a single dynasty in history
In 2006, the Seoul government announced that the Guksa Pyeonchan Wiwonhoe (National Institute of Korean History) had undertaken the digitization of the Joseon Wangjo Sillok, that is, the “Veritable Records…
Tsakonian Is the Only Current Greek Language That Derives from the One Spoken by the Spartans
Although it is officially considered a dialect, Tsakonian is a divergent variety of Greek frequently classified as a separate language, as it is not intelligible to speakers of standard Modern…
Structures Found in Iraq Reveal the Deliberate Collapse of One of the First Centralized Governments Over 5,000 Years Ago
At the archaeological site of Shakhi Kora, located in the Iraqi Kurdistan region, excavations have provided new insights into the origin and evolution of the earliest state institutions, dated to…
The “Cella Vinaria” and Grounds of a Villa Where Famous 2nd Century Saguntine Wine Mentioned by Roman Writers Was Produced, discovered in Spain
Excavations conducted at the Sant Gregori site, located in the town of Burriana (Castellón, Spain), have brought to light significant remnants of a maritime villa from the Roman era that…
Spectacular Bronze Statues and Thousands of Coins Found in the Etruscan-Roman Sanctuary of San Casciano dei Bagni
In the picturesque municipality of San Casciano dei Bagni, located in the Italian province of Siena, archaeological discoveries continue to shed light on the rich history of the Etruscan-Roman sanctuary…
Why Inuit Culture Survived in Greenland While the Norse Disappeared: Children’s Toys Made the Difference
During the Little Ice Age, a period marked by freezing temperatures and extreme climatic conditions, two cultures coexisted in Greenland: the Inuit and the Norse. Although both groups faced the…
Deutsche Physik: The Germanized and Aryan Physics Some Nazi Scientists Opposed to Einstein’s Relativity
What does physics have to do with politics? Or racism? The answer is nothing… unless we are talking about Germany in the first half of the 20th century. In that…
Tiny Black Holes Created at the Beginning of the Universe Could Be Hiding in Hollow Planets, Rocks, and Ancient Buildings on Earth
Black holes result from the collapse of massive stars after they exhaust their fuel, creating regions of spacetime where not even light can escape. However, new research suggests that the…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
_skyline.jpg){kind=link}
