The transition to a production economy gave decisive impetus to cultural and social progress.

The results of this change are particularly clear in the Metal Age, when copper ( Eneolithic)

and subsequently bronze (Bronze Age) implements heralded major increases in production

efficiency. This was paralleled by the further territorial spread of new types of economic

activity. Whereas in the Neolithic only a few tribes in the foothill oases of Kopet Dag had

switched to agriculture and animal husbandry, in the period in question outward-bound

agricultural communes extended more advanced forms of securing a livelihood to regions

lying further east, namely to the Murghab valley and later to Transoxania. Gradually the

hunters, fishermen and gatherers of the steppes saw the emergence of cattle-raising as a

way of life, a complete transition to a cattle-raising and agricultural tribal existence occurring

in the course of the second millennium b.c