The beginning stage of the development of any civilization depends on a range of factors and can continue for a long time but it is always characterized by an exceptionally important process the transformation of the territory into a cultural historical zone, i.e. an area of expression of the bearers of a particular value system.
The localization of the first documented dwelling places of the Bulgarians in the west reaches of “Mount Imeon”, i.e. the Pamirs Hindu Kush mountain range locates the most ancient cultural historical zone of this people in the heart of the Indo Iranian space. In the second half of the first millennium BC and the beginning of the first millennium AD, the passes across Hindu Kush connect its eastern part and the centers along the river valleys of the Indus and the Ganges to its west part, which includes present day Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tazhikistan and Iran, reaching to the foothills of the Zagros range.
In Zagros and the high Iranian plateau, the grand landscape of many thriving early cultures and their syncretism is unfolded. It is thought that the fields below the western foothills of Zagros are the most fertile on the planet in terms of traces from the “Neolithic revolution”, is the transition from hunting and gathering to a productive economy circa the 10th millennium BC.
Bakh in Afghanistan
The first places inhabited by the Bulgarians in the eastern Indo Iranian region near “Mount Imeon” are marked as Balhara in many written sources. It is later known as Baktria, which has left its sound pattern in the toponymal Bakh in Afghanistan a town in the northern part of the country. Even in those regions, one can see the creation and consolidation of an urban way of life, regardless of the natural conditions and that is typical of the Bulgarian civilization. The Bulgarians built towns in open areas surrounded by mountain ranges, and also in valleys. Their urbanization also spread in the plains of the big steppe rivers.
The main characteristics of the landscape of the civilization of the Bulgarians were reproduced at the end of the second and during the first millennium BC when the state organizations of the Bulgarians started moving because of ethnic demographic and economic reasons. Leaving their original homeland, the Bulgarians carried on their civilization skills and used them first of all in the urbanization of the lands to the north of the Caucasus, between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea or, in other words between the rivers Volga and Don.
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