Hakloot

Kuljabasy

On Sunday 30 May I decided to explore a little known site of petroglyphs in Kazakhstan, called Kuljabasy after the mountain range where they are located, past a small military town called Otar in the direction of Bishkek. The long stretched out low mountain range is intersected by several valleys. The petroglyphs are nested in these valleys where people have lived for thousands of years. I managed to explore just one of these valleys rich in carvings covering several periods from the bronze age through the Turkic Middle Ages. When walking through these valleys it’s clear why people stayed there. They offered protection from the elements, particularly in winter. Most of all though they have plenty of green pastures for animal flocks to feed off with wells turning water into small little streams. The rock facings are glistening black in southerly direction. A perfect canvas for petroglyph art.

At the mouth of the valley where it opens up to the plain a bronze age cemetery has partially been unearthed showing rows of rectangular graves. Further observation reveals that several of these rows of graves are lined one next to the other but still mostly covered in earth. All graves are made of slate which is abundantly available.

Kuljabashi has a series of remarkable carvings. One such carving from the Bronze Age is a drawing of 2 hunters with a wolf mask on hunting a dog in toe. The drawing of the bull is rather large at approximately 1m in length. It can be challenging to take pictures of these find carvings in the mid day sun as the rock seems to be coated with a reflective metallic coating.

Another drawing shows two males either dancing or fighting. They seem to be wearing boxing gloves. It’s a rather interesting dancing scene with some animals around. Not all locations I have visited have dancing humans. The last one I saw was in Sarmishsay in Uzbekistan although those dancers were more stylized.

Some drawings appear to be very recent from the medieval Turkic periods, in this case showing a mean on a horse who’s bearing a flag. One man seems to be looking on.

Kuljabasy has plenty of deer representations. Either individual animals or herds of deer as in this example on a horizontal, flat, slab. All do have elaborate visualizations of the antlers.

There are plenty of examples showing the wide range in time periods covered in Kuljabasy. This example of a cart chiseled on a horizontal surface probably dates to the medieval Turkic period as well. For the people living there and creating this art they must have seen these vehicles pass by and leave enough of an impression on them so they would leave its testimony on the rock surface. This could indicate that the valley could have been part of a well trodden route for carriages to pass there.

One particular drawing I found left me with the distinct impression of a strong similarity with the famous Kazakhstan “Golden Man” representation with arms held at the hip and a high pointed hat on the head. With such a wide choice of subjects and periods covered in one site its very difficult to make a selection of what to share and what not.