Scythian Culture - Preservation of The Frozen Tombs of The Altai Mountains (UNESCO)

CHAPTER I • SCYTHIANS IN THE EURASIAN STEPPE AND THE PLACE OF THE ALTAI MOUNTAINS IN IT
Culture and Landscape in the High Altai
Esther Jacobson-Tepfer
University of Oregon, USA
The glaciated peaks known as Tavan Bogd
(the Five Masters) punctuate the juncture of
Mongolia, Russia and China. They also define the
spatial centre of a rich cultural tradition going
back at least to the upper Paleolithic period and
marked, at least in part, by a striking interconnection
between archaeological monuments
and the larger landscape. This tradition is best
known through the burials preserved in the high
mountainous areas of Tuva, the Russian Altai,
eastern Kazakhstan and western Mongolia and
associated with an emerging nomadic tradition
within the Altai-Sayan uplands during the first
millennium (9 th – 3 rd c.) bce.
Yet despite the fame surrounding their cultural
remains, the early Altai-Sayan nomads
should be understood as only one segment of a
long cultural chain centred in the high Altai but
extending east, north, west and south from the
high river valleys and ridges into surrounding
mountain steppe. An examination of that longer
tradition, extending over thousands of years,
allows us to understand the particular interconnection
of archaeology and landscape within the
Altai mountain region.
At present, the landscape centred on Tavan
Bogd is marked by high, rocky ridges crested by
snowfields and glaciers. Valleys are deep and
their sidewalls precipitous. These features reflect
the ancient advance and retreat of glaciers that
left behind scraped and polished bedrock along
upper slopes and high plains strewn with boulders.
The rocky aspect of the Altai is most pronounced
within Mongolia. In that part of the Altai
uplift, rivers flowing down from the snow and
glacier-draped mountains create ribbons of green
meandering through an otherwise harshly dry
environment. Only along the border between the
Mongolian and Chinese Altai does one find larch
forests and occasional lush mountain meadows
(Fig. 1).
By contrast, the Russian, Chinese and Kazakh
Altai receive more moisture than falls on the
Mongolian side of the Altai ridge. These regions
are consequently more heavily forested and the
steppe regions greener. What we now find is not,
however, what has always existed: the present
environmental character of the Altai region, with
its variations on all international sides of the
ridge, has existed for approximately 3,000 years.
Earlier, during the middle Holocene, much of
this region was covered with forests of pine,
larch, and spruce, but by the Bronze Age (2 nd millennium
bce), forests were retreating in the
Mongolian Altai and in the Russian Altai’s Kosh
Agach region abutting Mongolia on the northwest.
Within the present mountainous steppe and
forest steppe zone, agriculture other than that
involving the gathering of wild grasses has probably
never existed on a measurable scale.
Hunting, fishing and gathering must have supported
human communities down through the
middle Holocene. With the onset of the late
Holocene (c. 4000 cal. yrs bp), characterized by a
drier and cooler environment and by the gradual
replacement of forests by grassland, herding
began to supplement these economic activities.
By the end of the 3 rd millennium bce – that period
coinciding with the emergence of the Bronze
Age – climate change had resulted in an environment
far more hospitable to semi-nomadic,
horse-dependent pastoralism.
Fig.1Turkic burial and
larch forests in the
Valley of Elt Gol,
Bayan Ölgiy aimag,
Mongolia.
© Gary Tepfer.
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