New archaeological findings in the Nura and Sarysu River basins
In the summer of 1967, in addition to individual finds on the Obalisan hill, the site of Aidarly 2, located near the nameless takyr near the Aidarly, was added to the Mousterian and Levallois-Mousterian sites of the Middle Paleolithic. More than 500 jasper objects of Levallois-Mousterian character have been found here. Among the finds there are 30 disc-shaped and 13 one-sided cores of various shapes, as well as three prismatic, two fan-shaped, four multiplatform and several amorphous cores. The vast majority of finds are represented by atypical and typical Levallois cleavages. There are a few ready-made tools: 10 bifaces and four hems.
Two locations of pebble tools are located in the area of Muzbel and Byruynak settlements. Here are found choppings, choppers, points, skobel. By typological features and conditions of finding, they are synchronous with the Mousterian ones and similar to the Karabura ones.
Works in 1967 made it possible to state the existence in Central Kazakhstan, as well as in Central Asia, of two types of archaeological sites, at least in the Lower and Middle Paleolithic. Suppose we do not take into account the Batpak 7 site, conditionally assigned to the Upper Paleolithic. In that case, there are no clearly pronounced Late Paleolithic sites in the basins of the Nura and Sarysu rivers. The locations of the Mesolithic and Early Neolithic times are also unknown. The overwhelming majority of the Stone Age sites in Central Kazakhstan belong to the Late Neolithic and Eneolithic. In 1967, 24 new monuments were opened. The most interesting are Aidarly 1, Koskuduk 2-4, Shabyndy 1-3, Byruynak 1, Kudaymende 19, and Borybas 5.
The Aidarly 1 is located on the takyr. Several hundred jasper objects have been collected here, primarily represented by cores and chips. In one insignificant section of the takyr, few ready-made guns were found.
The hills in Koskuduk and Shabyndy are composed of jasper and berberite; in the Stone Age, these places were often visited by a man who left production waste and rejected products on an area of several square kilometers. A treasure of four copper ingots was found at the Borybas 5 site. They were buried in rubble in a vertical position in pairs at a distance of 30 cm from each other. The space between them was filled with crushed malachite ore mixed with charcoal and burnt animal bones.