New locations of rock art in East Kazakhstan

The Ust-Kamenogorsk Pedagogical Institute and the Zaysan Museum of Local History continued to study rock carvings in the Okey tract of the Zaysan district. In total, 10 hunting scenes, numbering about 200 figures of animals and people, were studied in the Okey tract this season. On a small stone (100x50 cm), images of 36 goats, two people and a dog were found, combined into a composition representing a driven hunting scene. A hunter is shooting from a bow in the lower-left corner, and on the right side, behind a corral, a man kneeling on one knee. The ancient artist skillfully used natural cracks in the rocky surface to depict the corral. The contours of these drawings were first drawn with a thin sharp instrument, then the inner contour space was removed by continuous knockout or polished.

Exploration and search works revealed several new locations of petroglyphs near the villages Pokrovka and Lasty in the Tarbagatai region. An interesting stone depicting a two-wheeled chariot in a paired horse team was discovered by hydrologists Yu. Stogneev and V. Smirnov at the Smagul Pass, not far from the village of Pokrovka (see cover). Each wheel appears to have six spokes; the drawbar and the transverse beam - the yoke - were well preserved. The oval-shaped cargo platform is located behind the axis of the chariot. Most of the images of chariots were recorded in Karatau, and the find from East Kazakhstan, apparently, still determines the northernmost border of the distribution of images of chariots in Kazakhstan. The initial date of the image of the chariot is the beginning of the 1st millennium BC.

Dozens of drawings of people, bulls, deer and mountain goats were found on the spurs of the Kalbinskiy ridge in the Karasai and Medvedka tracts. The ancient Turkic stone statue (9th-10th centuries) was found near Algabas, Ulan district.