Asian traditions refer to a hidden kingdom—Shambala, the Centre—in an unknown part of Inner Asia. (The Gobi Desert, formerly fertile, now a repository of old bones, is often cited; the desiccation of Central Asia, as broad lakes vanished in dry pans and grasslands turned into shifting sands, might have turned an ancient city into a legend. The death of a civilization can come quickly: the change in climate that dried up rivers and destroyed the savannas of the central Sahara scattered the great pastoral civilizations of Fessan and Tassili in just a few centuries after 2500 B.C.)
