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Kulzhabasy petroglyphs.

Tour to petroglyphs in Kazakhstan.

“He who conquers himself is the mightiest warrior”

 Confucius.

Tour of safari on jeeps across Kazakhstan.

Petroglyphs in Kulzhabasy Mountains are situated on the tops and slopes of not high stone hill. The ancient pictures on rocks situated in 120 - 130 km from the Sanctuary Tamgaly, the most famous concentration of petroglyphs in Central Asian, in 200 km to the west from Almaty.
The mountain ridge Kulzhabasy is prolonged in latitude direction. Its tops reach the height from 800 up to 1180 m above sea level. Mountain ridge is situated to the north from Chu-Ili Mountains. It is connected with them by slightly seen bulkhead.
The middle part of Chu-Ili Mountains in the region of stations Kurdai and Anrakhai is called Kindyktas. The Valley of Kora River is situated between the mountain ridge of Kulzhabasy and Kindyktas.
Small streams and rivers, flowing to the valley, are becoming dry, but already in middle ages and XVIII - XIX c.c. they were full-flowing, on which are certifying the remained traces of dam, water collectors, water distributors and the traces of irrigational systems, and also the traces of fields.
The remains of irrigational systems are in the region of railway stations Kurdai, Anrakhai and also in the canyon Oidjailau in Kindyktas Mountains and in the west end of Chu-Ili Mountains, what shows that in the period of moisturizing, the populations here were dealing in agriculture.
The south slopes of Kulzhabasy Mountains dried by san in summer, had more herbs in ancient times and were much suitable for life, than now. In some canyons and now there are the pieces of vegetation in a form of shrubs and small groves with willows.
All of them are situated near the springs. In ancient times all these canyons were populated tightly enough, on which are the numerous evidences and the traces of settlements of several his torical epochs. This entire region is the specific ecological niche, populated at that time by the population of early Iron Age, ancient Turks and Kazakhs.
This tribes and peoples left the numerous pictures on rocks, which attracted the attention of students of local lore and archaeologists. Petroglyphs at the station Anrakhai opened and studied at the beginning of the 50-es years P.I.Marikovsky.
He published an article on this discovery (Marikovsky 1953). In the 1980-es the expedition of KazPI named after Abay discovered the petroglyphs of Bronze Age in the canyons Shoskabas, Oidjailau, Ungurly and Alaygyr.
The parts of them are published (Mariashev, Goryachev, 2002). The investigators paid attention on the stylistic likeness of many petroglyphs of West Semirechie. In 2001 the archaeologists' amateurs R.Sala and J.-M.Deom found the new accumulation of petroglyphs during their trips.
In 2002 year the Semirechenskaya archaeological expedition of the Institute of Archaeology named after A.Kh.Margulan worked here. The rock pictures were researched, the burials, settlements and remains of settlements were found (Mariashev, 2002).

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Authority:
The book "Petroglyphs in Kulzhabasy Mountains". Baipakov K.M., Maryashev A.N. Almaty, 2004.

Photo
Alexander Petrov.