Guarding Our Heritage

June 14, 2017

In the middle of May, 2017, six AUCA students undertook an expedition to an ancient site located on Issyk Kul, 3 kilometers to north of Sary-Kamysh. Rejebov Tirkishmurat, a sophomore of Anthropology department told us about this trip:

The project was supported by the SILC and was made possible with the help of two professors in the Anthropology department: Aida Abdykanova and Cholpon Chotaeva. The importance of this site lies within its complex of amazing rock art motifs dating back to the Bronze Age. Among other archaeological sites, we found Balbals (Turkic Era statues), Turkic ritual fencings, Tash-koroo (stones yards). Summer 2016, many media sources produced alarming reports regarding the many artifacts that had been stolen from their places and were never found again. The main goal of our research was to help guard the complex of rock art from looting. Accordingly, we created a map with borders of the site, used GPS to pinpoint the locations of each artifact—a rock with a petroglyph on it—and figured out how many were stolen. We helped the local people who are interested in preserving their heritage by helping organize an Open Air Museum. We hope our research is the key in protecting their culture heritage from. It makes me sad to think people will never see the artifacts again because of the looters.

            The rock art site surprised me due to both the hugeness of its size and its centuries-long history of human inhabitation. Our aim, as anthropologists, is to show people how important it is to protect and preserve these sites and artifacts. They are literally artifacts of an inaccessible moment in time: the past. The only way we can learn about the past is through the vestiges of ancient societies. At the site, we noticed many interesting things. For instance, the petroglyphs are located down from the top of mountain creating a lineal structure, as if they are laying on both sides of the road. Actually, it was not a road or the remains of a flooded stream. However, we came up with another hypothesis during our research: near the end of the Ice Age, when the Earth was warming, ice sheets broke and slowly moved down, leaving a trace of stones behind.

            The motifs on the petroglyphs can tell us in which period they were made, yet we have many techniques to identify it. However, the simplest way of dating is all about technique, condition and content of the rock art; for instance, we met some solar and other symbols, hunting scenes which belong to the Bronze Age. People who lived during the Bronze Age worshiped the Sun, because they knew that without it no life would exist. We encountered motifs of caravans of camels loaded with goods, which proves that nearby was one of the Silk Road paths. These findings help us understand how one society would replace another. The next evidence showed us about a different society called Turkic. We found a few ceremonial monuments that belonged to them. It has a commemorative place inside of a square made by stones, which is about four meters in size, with stone sculptures (balbals). These ceremonial monuments do not serve as a burial place for someone, but rather as a memorial ritual for those who died on a battlefield and would never return. The memorial included some property which belonged to them.

            If we want to create a better future, we ought to know our past. As we mentioned previously, the only way we can study the past is through the physical artifacts that remain. Therefore, we want people to understand how important it is to keep these sites safe. Typically, local people play the main role in preserving their own cultural heritage. These sites are also important because they are part cultural heritage on a national level; moreover, these sites are a huge part of our prehistory and history.

Considering Issyk-Kul Rock Art, as the images on the stones suggest, this site was a sacred place for many generations of ancient societies. Not only is Sary-Kamysh village famous for its rock art, but the whole Issyk-Kul valley represents a great exhibition of ancient rock art motifs. Most of them show game animals which might seem boring or too simple. But this kind of symbolism might be associated with the ritual hunting, or with ancient beliefs, some people consider mythical animals to be their sacred ancestors. The ritual hunting suggests that by depicting goats, deer, and sheep on the stones, ancient people believed they were bringing back to life the animals they killed during the hunt. The “mythical animals” hypothesis suggests that they worshiped them because they considered them their ancestors. In any case, several hypotheses might be put forward to interpret the rock art made by our ancestors. Therefore, we must protect these sites in order to study as much as we can about our past. We studied the site and handed it over to the local people for protection. No one can better protect the ancient sites than the local people.

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