After excavating everything from the ruins of a large-scale smelting facility to plentiful iron goods like arrowheads and knives, researchers are convinced that they've finally located the lost city of Marsmanda.

When archaeologists traveled to the mountains of Uzbekistan in 2011, they were hoping to find evidence of Bronze Age people who’d lived in the region some 4,000 years ago. Instead, they found a sea of artifacts which dated not to the Bronze Age, but to the Middle Ages. Now, they believe that they’ve uncovered evidence of a “lost” Silk Road city at the site, a metropolis known as Marsmanda that has eluded experts for decades.

Though Marsmanda appears in 10th-century Arab texts, where it’s hailed as an advanced producer of prized iron goods and weapons, the city has never been loc

See Full Page