Petroglyphs are rock carvings or engravings found around the world. Dating as far back as 20,000 years, they attest the existence of humans on all continents except Antarctica.
Most frequently depicting animals, hunting or battle scenes, petroglyphs offer a glimpse into the lives of civilisations as old as the Neolithic period (10,000 – 4,500 BC) and as recent as the early 20th century AD. Many of the archaeological sites where petroglyphs have been well preserved are enlisted as World Heritage by UNESCO and even more are on the tentative list awaiting inscription.
In Kazakhstan, four such sites are on the tentative list, with a fifth already being inscribed as World Heritage in 2004. “Kazakhstan’s reputation as the ‘country of petroglyphs’ is well-deserved”, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said at the third meeting of the National Kurultai Congress on 15 March. “The Eshkiolmes Ridge, one of Eurasia’s largest petroglyph clusters, along with the ancient drawings at Arpauzen, Kulzhabasy and Sauyskandyk, chronicles a millennia of steppe civilization.”
All four sites, at Eshkiolmes, Arpauzen, Kulzhabasy and Sauyskandyk, are currently on UNESCO’s Tentative List of World Heritage, however, Eshkiolmes is the biggest and one of the most studied petroglyph sites in Kazakhstan, comprising around 10,000 rock carvings, on more than 20 mountain gorges, as well as traces of settlements and burial grounds. The property is located on the north of the Koksu River, in the Almaty Region.
“The rock carvings of Eshkiolmes were made during the different periods and together with the other archaeological components of the complex represent the unique testimony of the evolution of the rock art in the context of the social, ideological and cultural transformations from the end of II millennium BC to the middle of XX century”, UNESCO says about the site.
The petroglyphs within the Archaeological Landscape of Eshkiolmes date from the Late Bronze Age (12th century BC) to the middle of the 20th century AD. Each historical period showcases different scenes and motifs in the carvings.
Petroglyphs dating back to the Bronze Age are abundant in dynamic scenes of battles and cattle raids, with numerous images of battle chariots and armed warriors, as well as several heroic and mythical figures, such as sun-head characters. During the Iron Age, the anthropomorphs were much less popular than the images of local animals, while the Middle Ages are characterized again by scenes of battles and hunting, combined with the daily life of the nomadic communities.
Similarly to the site at Eshkiolmes, the already World Heritage site at Tamgaly features petroglyphs from the Bronze Age to the early 20th century. The site comprises 5,000 rock carvings spread across 48 complexes, complete with human settlements and ancient tombs. The 900-hectare archaeological landscape is “a testimony to the husbandry, social organization and rituals of pastoral communities of the Central Asian steppes from the Bronze Age to the present day”, according to UNESCO.
All five petroglyph sites across Kazakhstan present similar characteristics, the carvings dating to the same long period of time, from the Early Iron Age to the beginning of the 20th century, with the site of Kulzhabasy thought to predate the one at Tamgaly. Moreover, they all comprise similar ancient settlement remains, burial grounds, sometimes entire necropolises and ancient dwellings, as well as showing signs of the same vegetation and wild and domesticated animals. For these reasons, Kazakhstan is seeking to inscribe all of them as World Heritage under one transnational serial property of the rock art sites in Central Asia, complete with other petroglyph sites from Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
