Searching for monuments in the Karatau gorges
The route-search detachment of the South-Kazakhstan complex expedition of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR carried out reconnaissance of the tracts of Bes-Aryk, Altysu, Ekizkora, located in the west of the Karatau ridge. As a result, many previously unknown Neolithic sites, burial mounds, and petroglyphs were discovered.
A collection of flint tools and blanks of the Neolithic period was collected on the first floodplain terrace on both banks of the Bes-Aryk River and in thick alluvial sediments. Prismatic and wedge-shaped cores, scrapers, piercers, knives, notches and knife-like plates, and a segmented insert were found. The material for the tools was beautiful yellow and lilac chalcedony, black and gray flint, jasper-quartzites.
Some burial mounds have been recorded in Bes-Aryk. Among them stands out the burial ground Koblandy, located 10 km north of the entrance to the gorge and numbering more than 80 mounds and ring-fences, grouped in chains stretched from east to west. There is a mound in the center of the burial ground "with a mustache". Burial mounds of this type are also found in other cemeteries in the area.
In the mountain valleys of Altysu and Egiz-Kora, groups of unique “royal” mounds were found, reminiscent of the Saka burial ground Bes-Shatyr in Semirechye. These mounds have powerful stone mounds, giving in terms of outlines of multi-beam stars. The most grandiose of them are adjoined by various stone expositions that stretch for hundreds of meters on the eastern and western sides. During exploration, more than 100 burial structures of the korum type were also noted.
Rock carvings dated to the burial grounds of this region: Berkutty, Turganbay, and Koblandy. This circumstance and the stylistic analysis of petroglyphs allow us to attribute them to the Saka-Usun and early medieval periods. The technique of continuous knockout dominates, although there are contour and skeletal images. Some plot compositions were met. In the Kukentaily tract, a one-and-a-half-meter image of a two-humped camel is carved on a sheer cliff. There is also a unique plot of confrontation between two lions and a Bactrian camel. The animals are “pacified” by the person depicted in the center of the composition. Nearby is an exciting scene of a shamanic ritual. These drawings belong to the Saka time. Single plots are traditional: galloping, lying, and standing koalas and rams. There are horseshoe-shaped signs, tamga. Often petroglyphs of the 1st millennium BC overlap or coexist with later ones - I millennium AD and Kazakh khanate times.