Greater than 3,000 meters above sea degree, within the Fergana mountain vary of Kyrgyzstan, the carvings within the Saimaluu Tash valley inform the tale of a inhabitants that refuses to lose the traditions of its ancestors. They do not do it with phrases, however with photos: maps of the situation and migration of ungulates, in addition to searching scenes illustrate the stones of this glacial valley.
Those are the Saimaluu Tash (patterned stone in Kyrgyz) petroglyphs, some of the greatest and best-preserved teams of rock artwork on the planet, with tens of 1000’s of engravings from the Bronze Age to the Turkish length.
Those petroglyphs aren’t simply artwork: they’re the remnants of the reminiscence of a nomadic tradition at the verge of extinction. They replicate searching scenes, maps and puts appropriate for searching and grazing, combining native and Indo-Eu influences. The commonest depictions are basically ibex and deer. Wolves, foxes, wild boars, anthropomorphic figures, searching and agricultural scenes, and domesticated animals reminiscent of horses, camels, cows, yaks, and canine additionally seem.
Basic view of the river of stones with carvings in Saimaluu Tash valley. DMFL
As well as, you’ll see zigzag tracks there, which point out transit routes for recreation. Those engravings seem to have a communicative location. Due to this fact, those stones be offering a exceptional document of the evolution of searching and its equipment. They endure witness to a time when shepherds and mountain farmers left their imaginative and prescient carved in stone to somebody who knew learn it, offering a exceptional testimony to the Central Asian nomadic custom.
Medical coverage project
On this panorama of glaciers, moraines and high-altitude meadows, the global multidisciplinary staff I lead is growing a pioneering find out about: inspecting the stones that enhance those engravings. Geologists Ramon Jiménez and Javier Luengo, from the Nationwide Institute of Geology and Mining in Spain (IGME-CSIC), analyze its petrography and porosity. With the effects, it’s going to be conceivable to give an explanation for the petrophysical traits that enabled the engraving of stone artwork and its conservation.
Through inspecting the colour and roughness of the engravings themselves, data will also be got concerning the tactics used and their relative age. Moreover, by way of making use of thermoluminescence tactics at the stays of ceramic vessels discovered within the archaeological excavation at 1.70 meters and mass spectroscopy at the charcoal discovered subsequent to those pots, it’s going to be conceivable to determine the age of the petroglyphs.
Geomorphologist Julio García-Oteiza Siria will find out about the formation of moraines and date them with a view to reconstruct the glacial evolution of the valley and relate it to the classes of nomadic career by which the engravings had been made. This may increasingly let us decide no longer handiest how the stones had been gathered, but additionally how the relaxation affected which of them had been decided on for engraving, since a big focus of petroglyphs will also be noticed within the accumulation of stones alongside the valley, however there also are 1000’s of scattered blocks with stone engravings.
Those stones, gathered by way of glacial processes over 1000’s of years, provide a sparkly darkish patina. When this patina is scraped off, the brown colour reappears, making a chromatic distinction that allowed the advent and preservation of rock artwork. Biologists Sergio Pérez-Ortega, Senior Scientist on the Royal Botanical Lawn (CSIC), and Asuncion de los Ríos, Medical Researcher on the Nationwide Museum of Herbal Sciences (CSIC), consultants within the range of lichens and microorganisms related to lithic substrates, will analyze the organic composition and construction of those patinas the usage of molecular processes higher understood by way of petroleum strategies. visual.
Stone engraving of mountain goats within the rocks of the Saimaluu Tash river. DMFL
The undertaking has a basic pillar: archaeologist Aidai Sulaimanova, who acts as a hyperlink between IGME-CSIC and Kyrgyz establishments, additionally offering the historic and cultural framework essential to interpret the unearths. Your participation promises that medical paintings is aligned with the wishes of preservation and valorization of native heritage.
This data can be very important for proposing conservation methods in opposition to threats reminiscent of climate prerequisites, local weather exchange or rising tourism. In the end, the analysis goals to put the medical foundation for safeguarding the web site and together with it at the UNESCO Global Heritage Record.
Glance to the previous to give protection to the longer term
The Saimaluu Tash glacial valley is a novel setting: moraine deposits, heart-shaped lakes, slopes fashioned by way of erosion and a microclimate that, ironically, helped keep the engravings. Through researching it, we no longer handiest need to know the geological historical past of the stones, but additionally to know the context that allowed those rock engravings to be preserved virtually intact for 1000’s of years. In any case, the geological historical past of the valley is intertwined with the human historical past they constitute.
Despite the fact that the get admission to is hard, a six-hour stroll alongside the trail and 9 months of the yr beneath the snow secure the engravings, strains of local weather exchange and vandalism are starting to be observed. Snow, altitude and isolation are allies, however no longer without end. In reality, the glacier that created this impressive panorama is disappearing.
Stone engraving of a hunter from the Saimaluu Tash river stone. DMFL
As of late, nomadic communities in Kyrgyzstan keep an historical way of living in keeping with animal husbandry and communal residing within the mountains. Each and every summer season, households transfer into the tall grass and erect their yurts, round homes historically made from felt. There they carry horses, cows, yaks and sheep that graze at the grasslands.
Those that are living round Saimaluu Tash these days take care of a extra territorial than ritual courting with the traditional stone engravings. Despite the fact that they proceed to make use of those self same pastures and mountains, they not settle in Saimalu Tash in the summertime, as the realm is secure. Greater than an lively a part of their conventional practices, their present courting with the petroglyphs is one in every of recognize and identification: they acknowledge this position as a legacy in their ancestors and a cultural image of the area.
Now, greater than a century after the primary seek advice from of the painter, ethnographer and topographer Nikolai Gavrilovich Khludov in 1902, Spanish science, in cooperation with Kyrgyz mavens, is listening once more to the message carved at the stones of Saymalu Tash 1000’s of years in the past. The problem is twofold: to decipher them and, above all, to make certain that they proceed to talk for plenty of millennia to come back.
