Researchers from Kazakhstan and Russia have located rock carvings in the Koksu River valley that Pyotr Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky sketched 170 years ago. The site was identified on October 13, the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences reported on October 20.
The traveller’s drawings and descriptions of the terrain provided the clues. They proved accurate enough to match the historical records with the landscape as it appears today.
The researchers attribute the figures of sheep, goats and deer to different periods, from the Early Iron Age to the Middle Ages. They identify a large deer with branching antlers as early Saka art. Similar imagery appears in ancient jewellery and other petroglyphs in southeastern Kazakhstan.
The expedition included specialists from the Tanbaly museum-reserve and the Institute of Archaeology. They surveyed a route of almost 600 kilometres through Kazakhstan’s Almaty and Zhetysu regions, using aerial photography and precise mapping.
The next stage is to process the material. The researchers plan to create three-dimensional models of the sites and an interactive map of the historical route.
