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Mount Nayzatau. Mangyshlak.

Tours - Astana Mangyshlak.

“Nature has no principles. She makes no distinction between good and evil”

Anatole France.

Combined Tours Central Asia and Mangyshlak.

The name of the mountain Nayza on Mangyshlak or Nayzatau, is translated with Kazakh as "A spear tip". This comparison is very far from natural education. The poetry of nomads found the general these images.
Mount Nayza, as a huge wedge, cut the basis of the Ustyurt break, having sheltered in the mouth of the small cretaceous gorge. Slopes of the mountain are covered with the concretions coming from the destroyed sandy layer.
To the north of the mountain as peas huge stone spheres with an unusual surface were scattered. These are spherical concretions. Not all of them are similar to spheres. On this field the extended cigar-shaped educations meet.
They are small, to meter long, vertical lonely columns sometimes meet. Wind fancifully blows the surfaces of concretions, giving them the surreal forms. There is no road in the field of concretions, it is only possible to pass on foot, having gone down from the Ustyurt cliff or to approach as much as possible on off road terrain from the West on takyr soil from a ledge Zhabayushkan.
Very often in the cretaceous gorge and on Nayzatau slopes it is possible to observe small packs of the Ustyurt mouflon. At approach to cliff from which in all greatness the view of Nayzatau opens the traveler faces with stone a construction - ranks of vertically established plates of average size on which tops the same plates are horizontally laid.
As in Stonehenge, but only in very small scale! Everything is explained by more detailed consideration. These are walls of huge traps of shelters, counting of time which creations begins with a bronze age. Possibly, the ancient people used them for catching of saiga (Saiga tatarica).
Absolutely in recent time thousand a livestock of this desert antelope were grazed on Ustyurt plateau open spaces. Traps in the form of prison cells with harbourer holes were arranged on deadlock sites of the Ustyurt breaks.
The saiga at run is afraid of any small obstacle and is ready to run very long along it instead of jumping. Ancient hunters also used this feature. Low walls of traps just sent the exhausted animals to lovchy holes where they were waited by other hunters.
On Ustyurt plateau cliff and reaching these constructions very frequent phenomenon at times striking with the difficult configuration on the area of 2 - 4 hectares.

Authority:
Andrey Astafyev and  http://mangystau.info

Photos
Alexander Petrov.