In this article, I surveyed the characteristics of ancient gold works from Afghanistan and their relationships with other cultures. Cultural convergence and intermixture had occurred in ancient Afghanistan region for its geographical situations, where every culture on the Eurasian continent such as the Western Greek culture after the expedition of the Alexander the Great, the northern and eastern nomadic culture, the southwestern Persian culture and the southeast Indian culture, meet together.
This geographical characteristic was in part beneficial to the region, providing rich chances to embrace other advanced civilizations quickly and to blend them into a unique culture. But, at the same time, it entailed a disadvantage of subsequent invasions and wars between many ethnic groups or nations. As a result, the region was destined to have peculiar and attractive but short and constantly changing cultural phenomenons. The ancient gold works from Afghanistan are very good examples to understand its historical and cultural characters.
With a large amount of gold and gem reserves, the gold works in Afghanistan had been developed from the Bronze Age. Among these ancient gold works in Afghanistan, the golden hoard of Tillya Tepe is the most important and variety collection. They are excavated in 1978 and reveal the peculiar characteristics of the Greco-Bactrian culture style. However, the style of Tillya Tepe gold works have similarities in the contemporary East Asian gold works, in particular such as the ancient artifacts from Xiongnu Tombs in Mongolia and those from the Lelang (樂浪) tombs in Korean peninsula. It means that these far-off cultures shared their unique gold work techniques and styles under the influences of Central Eurasian nomadic culture. Also they might have interacted with one other through the ancient step route of Eurasian continent during the early period of the Christian Era.