There are at least 17 places off the southern coast of Britain that modern scholars have suggested might be the island of Iktis, a major center of the Iron Age (ca. 750 B.C.–A.D. 43) tin trade. The confusion, however, didn’t begin in modern times, but rather with the multiple ancient authors who mention the island. The only one to call the island Iktis—without saying exactly where it could be found—is the first-century B.C. Greek historian Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus, who likely drew on other ancient Greek sources, reports that the Greek explorer Pytheas sailed to the British Isles in the fourth century B.C., landed in what is now Cornwall, saw the island, and wrote about it in his now-lost book On the Ocean. In his Library of History, Diodorus writes:

To an island which lies off Britain and is called Iktis, for at the time of ebb tide the space between this island and the mainland becomes dry and they can take the tin in large quantities to the island on their wagons…

In the first century A.D., the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder and the historian Suetonius used the name Vectis to refer to the Isle of Wight, which at some point became conflated with Diodorus’ Iktis, further muddying the waters. Pliny may also possibly reference Iktis in his Natural History when he refers to the island of Mictis—a name he got from the fourth-century B.C. Greek historian Timaeus—which, he writes, lies “six days sail from Britain where tin is found.”

Since at least the beginning of the nineteenth century, classicists and antiquarians have tried to pinpoint which island off the southern British coast is, in fact, the one to which these ancient writers refer—with little luck. And, despite repeated efforts, archaeologists, too, have resolved little except their commitment to their individual beliefs. Some say Iktis is Saint Michael’s Mount, a tidal island off Cornwall that once belonged to the same Benedictine monks who owned Mont-Saint-Michel off the French coast. Others believe it is a 60-foot-high limestone promontory jutting into Plymouth Sound now known as Mount Batten. Small-scale excavations were undertaken there beginning in the early nineteenth century, but little was recorded, and most of what remained there was destroyed during a WWII bombing raid. Nonetheless, finds including fourth-century B.C. fibulas, or pins, from northwest Iberia, brooches and bracelets made in the Iron Age La Tène style that was widespread across Europe, and coins of British Iron Age tribes suggest the site was heavily used during the Iron Age.

Although Pliny writes that the tin upon which peoples on the European continent and beyond depended was “found” on the island, that was certainly not the case. Rather, the raw material was traded in what twentieth-century University of Oxford archaeologist C. F. C. Hawkes called the island’s “tin mart.” Here Diodorus is perhaps a more reliable source when he writes, “On the island of Iktis the merchants purchase the tin of the natives…whence it is taken to Gaul overland to the Mediterranean.”

The origins of Gojoseon, the first Korean kingdom, are shrouded in myth. Although legend holds that it was founded by the king Dangun in 2333 B.C., Chinese records suggest that it emerged much later. The seventh-century B.C. Chinese history the Guanzi mentions that Gojoseon was an important kingdom, which scholars believe was on the Korean Peninsula or in a neighboring region of China. According to the first-century B.C. Chinese history the Shiji, by the second century B.C. the capital city of Gojoseon was known as Wanggeom-seong. But Chinese records are largely silent on its location. In the past, many historians believed that Wanggeom-seong was in the vicinity of Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, based on what appeared to be a reference in the Shiji to what became Pyongyang.

In the 1960s, a rare joint Chinese–North Korean archaeological excavation took place in China’s Liaoning Province at the site of a massive Gojoseon royal necropolis. The size of the complex suggested to some researchers that Wanggeom-seong must have been in the vicinity. About 140 people were buried in wooden coffins in 23 tombs at the necropolis. The tombs included rich grave goods such as a bronze dagger of a type that has emerged as key to defining the culture of Gojoseon.

Known as a mandolin-type dagger, after the shape of the stringed instrument, these artifacts are highly standardized, unlike pottery or stone monuments of the period, and have been used by archaeologists to define the limits of the Kingdom of Gojoseon. Researcher Jin-min Lee of the National Museum of Korea says that Korean scholars have studied Gojoseon daggers intensively, and the fact that so many have been found in Liaoning Province supports the idea that Wanggeom-seong might have been located there.

According to Chinese sources, Gojoseon fell in 108 B.C. Nonetheless, tombs with wooden coffins unique to Gojoseon continued to be built across what is today North Korea until at least the early first century A.D. Some historians believe this shows that the Gojoseon leadership maintained their power and control of the region and that Gojoseon culture carried on for perhaps 100 years after Chinese histories say the kingdom ended. Since Wanggeom-seong was the center of Gojoseon’s influence and power, identifying it could provide researchers with clues to how Gojoseon influence endured past the date it was traditionally thought to have ended.

From at least the sixth to eighth century A.D., the diverse peoples of Central Asia’s Pamir Mountains were under the rule of various kingdoms, including the Shughnān Kingdom. Although there is a present-day region in Tajikistan and Afghanistan called Shughnān, scholars only have a slim understanding of this ancient kingdom’s history, even though it lay at the crossroads of major ancient trade and pilgrimage routes connecting China and India. According to the Tang Shu, a Chinese history of the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618–906), a town called Kǔhán was Shughnān’s capital. Seventh- and eighth-century A.D. Buddhist travelogues, as well as the Shahnameh, a Persian epic poem written around A.D. 1000, provide crucial, yet vague, details about the kingdom. “These texts state that Shughnān played an active and important role in the political, military, trading, and economic life of Central Asia,” says historian Muzaffar Zoolshoev of the Institute of Ismaili Studies. Little is known, however, about the origins of Shughnān, its borders, the lives of its people, or the location of Kǔhán. “Although the Tang history identifies Kǔhán as the capital, it doesn’t give any details about its location, size, or population,” Zoolshoev says. “No other historical sources mention it.” The names of three early Shughnān kings who are recorded in the Tang Shu suggest that the kingdom’s earliest rulers could have been descended from the nomadic Iranian-speaking Saka tribes, one of many groups that migrated to the region in the first millennium B.C. These people may have followed Zoroastrianism, a monotheistic faith that arose among Iranian-speaking people in the sixth century B.C. and involves worship in fire temples.

Throughout the twentieth century, Soviet archaeologists documented traces of fortresses, settlements, and Saka burial grounds in Tajikistan that they tentatively dated to the era of the Shughnān Kingdom. They also identified numerous fire temples across the Pamir Mountains, including an unusual example that is circular with a square altar at the center, leading some archaeologists to speculate it was used by Saka who were followers of a fire or sun cult that was much more ancient than Zoroastrianism.

Based on historical texts and the available archaeological evidence, Zoolshoev has proposed more than 25 potential locations for Kǔhán within the modern-day region of Shughnān as well as elsewhere in Central Asia, including the ruined fortress of Karan in Tajikistan’s Darvaz district. Many of these sites have standing ruins of fortresses that have never been excavated or even formally recorded. “I hope this work will encourage historians and archaeologists to conduct further research that may reveal the site of the lost capital of Shughnān,” says Zoolshoev. Finding it, he says, would be a boon to scholars still struggling to understand the history of this mysterious kingdom.