Exploration of rock art in Kazakhstan
The petroglyphic group of the Institute of History, Archeology and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR carried out work to identify and fix rock art in the southern and eastern parts of the republic.
Petroglyphs were discovered 25 km northeast of Kentau, in the Dzhingilchak gorge. There are figures of bird-like deer with narrow beak-shaped muzzles, huge eyes, and rudimentary legs located one above the other, made in the style of deer stones. Iconographically and compositionally, the Dzhingilchak petroglyphs projected deer stones into the vertical plane of the rock. The deer figures are carved over the drawings of the Bronze Age and, in turn, are covered with later images. Images similar in style were recorded in the Talas Alatau, at an altitude of more than 4000 m above sea level, in the upper reaches of Kaskabulak. New discoveries make it possible to significantly expand the range of images of deer with beak-shaped muzzles and to outline on the materials of petroglyphs specific ways for the advancement of ethnic groups - carriers of this pictorial tradition - from the depths of the Central Asian steppes at the end of the 2nd millennium BC.
In the Kyzylata gorge (the southern slope of Karatau), near the medieval fortresses of Kyrykkyz and Balakorgan, new groups of rock paintings were discovered. We note the hunting scenes, the pursuit of wild goats by dogs, images of chariots, various solar symbols.
30 km west of the city of Dzhambul, on the spurs of the Malyi Karatau, B. A. Volchkov identified numerous figures of bulls, images of a pair of opposing feline predators and goats. The drawing of a deer attracts attention, the horns of which are interpreted as a solar disk with wavy rays extending from it.
In the East Kazakhstan region, the petroglyphs of the Akbaur grotto (Ulan district) have been further explored. In total, 83 drawings made in red ocher are copied here. Various signs-symbols in the form of oblique crosses, spoked wheels, lattices, broken lines are concentrated around images of people and several cone-shaped dwellings. Nearby are pictures of an inverted goat and a wagon with two disc-shaped wheels. Drawings made with red ocher have also been discovered near Zhantas (anthropomorphic figures and goats) and Alekseevka (numerous dots, rectangular figures, anthropomorphic images) villages.
New series of petroglyphs were recorded in the gorges of Narbota, Dolanaly, Bolgar-Tabyty on the banks of the Kalzhira river in the Markakol region and on the southwestern outskirts of the famous Zevakino burial ground in the Shemonaikha region.