A monumental task
Near the city of Termez, a massive cylindrical tower rises from the plains. This is the Zurmala Stupa, one of the oldest Buddhist structures in Central Asia, built during the height of the Kushan Empire in the 1st to 2nd centuries CE. The scale of the construction was enormous. Originally standing over 16 meters tall with a diameter of 14.5 meters, its creation required an estimated 1.2 million adobe bricks. The structure consists of a rectangular platform, oriented to the cardinal directions, upon which the huge, solid cylindrical monolith was built.
The core of the stupa was made from sun-dried mud bricks, a common material in ancient Bactria. Each square brick, measuring about 32x32 centimeters, was formed by hand in a mold while the clay was still wet. The entire structure was then faced with more durable baked bricks and likely covered with limestone slabs and decorated with stone reliefs depicting Buddhist mythology. Evidence suggests the stupa's exterior was painted a bright red. At the top, a chamber would have housed sacred relics or scriptures. Today, after nearly two millennia, only the heavily eroded adobe core remains.
An accidental record
The process of making millions of mud bricks by hand left behind an unintentional scientific record. As workers pressed the wet clay into molds, they left impressions of their fingers and palms on the surface. When the bricks were sun-dried and later sealed within the stupa, these impressions were preserved. These are not mere smudges; many are clear negatives of the skin's friction ridges, the same patterns used in modern fingerprinting.
The study of ancient fingerprints, known as paleodermatoglyphics, uses the fact that the ridge patterns of human fingerprints are unique and remain constant throughout life. By analyzing the density and breadth of these ridges, scientists can make statistical estimations about the age and sex of the person who left them. The plastic nature of wet clay makes it an excellent medium for preserving these detailed impressions, which become chemically stable and permanent once the clay is fired or dried. The bricks of the Zurmala Stupa contain a vast collection of these ancient biological markers.
The analysis of these prints provides direct evidence of the individuals who constructed the monument. The main finding from dermatoglyphic studies on ancient bricks and ceramics from various sites is that a large proportion of the fingerprints were left by adolescents and children. The narrower ridge breadth found in many of the Zurmala brick prints corresponds to that of younger individuals, pointing to their significant involvement in the labor-intensive process of brick-making. This physical evidence shows the social organization and labor practices of the Kushan Empire.