Uzboy River - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Uzboy River was a distributary

Distributary

A distributary, or a distributary channel, is a stream that branches off and flows away from a main stream channel. They are a common feature of river deltas. The phenomenon is known as river bifurcation. The opposite of a distributary is a tributary...

of the Amu Darya

Amu Darya

The Amu Darya , also called Oxus and Amu River, is a major river in Central Asia. It is formed by the junction of the Vakhsh and Panj rivers...

which flowed through the northwestern part of the Karakum Desert

Karakum Desert

The Karakum Desert, also spelled Kara-Kum and Gara Gum is a desert in Central Asia. It occupies about 70 percent, or 350,000 km², of the area of Turkmenistan....

of Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan , formerly also known as Turkmenia is one of the Turkic states in Central Asia. Until 1991, it was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic . Turkmenistan is one of the six independent Turkic states...

until the 18th century, when it abruptly dried up, destroying in the process the Turkmen civilization which had thrived along its banks.

Now a dry river channel and a center for archaeological excavations, the Uzboy flowed some 750 kilometers, from a branch in the Amu Darya River via Sarykamysh Lake

Sarygamysh Lake

The Sarygamysh Lake, also Sarykamysh or Sary-Kamysh , Turkmen for 'Yellow Depression," situated in north central Turkmenistan, is geographically located approximately midway between the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea...

to the Caspian Sea

Caspian Sea

The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed body of water on Earth by area, variously classed as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. The sea has a surface area of and a volume of...

. A riverine civilization existed along the banks of the river from at least the 5th century BC until the 18th century AD, when the water which had fed the Uzboy abruptly stopped flowing out of the main course of the Amudarya. The Uzboy dried up, and the tribes which had inhabited the river's banks were abruptly dispersed, the survivors becoming nomadic desert dwellers.

In the early 1950s, construction work started to build a major irrigation canal

Main Turkmen Canal

The Main Turkmen Canal was a large-scale irrigation project in Soviet Turkmenistan. The canal was intended to transport water from the Amu Darya river to Krasnovodsk , a city in Turkmenistan on the coast of the Caspian Sea...

roughly along the river bed of the former Uzboy. However, the project was abandoned soon after the death of Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

in 1953; later on, Qaraqum Canal

Qaraqum Canal

The Qaraqum Canal in Turkmenistan is one of the largest irrigation and water supply canals in the world...

was constructed along an entirely different, much more southerly, route.

See also