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

PRESERVATION OF THE FROZEN TOMBS OF THE ALTAI MOUNTAINS
Fig. 2 Petroglyph
showing elk and
aurochs. Late
Pleistocene or Early
Holocene, Aral Tolgoi,
Bayan Ölgiy aimag,
Mongolia.
Fig. 3 Petroglyph
hunting scene. Bronze
Age, Tsagaan Salaa I,
Bayan Ölgiy aimag,
Mongolia.
Fig. 4 Petroglyph
caravan scene. Late
Bronze Age, Upper
Tsagaan Gol complex,
Bayan Ölgiy aimag,
Mongolia.
Photos: © Gary Tepfer.
These conditions and economic way of life
have persisted up to the near present. Within the
Russian Altai, economic development during the
Soviet period significantly altered the traditional
pastoral way of life; until recently, the effects of
modernization were far less apparent within the
more remote Mongolian Altai. Now, however,
global climate change is causing a rapid melting
of the Altai glaciers, permafrost, and snowfields
and a radical loss of surface water. These changes
together with stresses created by the ramifications
of our global economy threaten the traditional
way of life and the steppe environment that
has supported it. This is particularly evident in
the Mongolian Altai.
There are no recognized surface monuments
from the late Paleolithic period, but a few concentrations
of rock-pecked images offer glimpses into
the culture of Stone Age peoples. The concentration
of such rock art at Aral Tolgoi and the complex
of Tsagaan Salaa / Baga Oigor – both within
the Mongolian Altai – reflect a concern with large
animals such as mammoth, aurochs (wild cattle)
and horses represented in a static, profile style
(Fig. 2).
These images are echoed in the small Kalgut
site on the Ukok Plateau – close, as the crow flies,
to the Mongolian complexes. In these complexes,
in that of the Upper Tsagaan Gol under the
eastern slopes of Tavan Bogd, and scattered
throughout other sites in the high Mongolian
Altai, rock-pecked imagery of the late Stone Age
(early-middle Holocene) continued to reflect the
cultural and economic significance of large game
animals (elk, aurochs, horses, and bear) and a
general lack of interest in the representation of
human activities. This changed, however, during
the Bronze Age (2 nd millennium bce). Imagery
from that period, recorded in the Mongolian and
Russian Altai, suggests an increasing density of
human communities based on animal husbandry
and a growing interest in self-representation.
Hunting remained an important theme in Bronze
Age rock art (Fig. 3), but it was supplemented by
scenes of the herding of large animals, people
driving wheeled vehicles, families caravanning
(Fig. 4), and even by scenes of raids and conflict.
“Hero hunters” and hunters facing off large animals
suggest the emergence of an heroic epic tradition.
Similarly expressive of cultural texture is
the sheer variety of distinctive and expressive
styles of representation.
The wealth of cultural expression reflected in
Bronze Age rock art is evident, also, in surface
monuments tentatively assigned to that period.
Massive standing stones aligned within stone
frames from north to south are among the most
striking of these monuments (Fig. 5). No less
impressive are the so-called khirigsuur (“khereksur”)
characterized by stone mounds surrounded
by circular or squared “walls” embellished by
radii to the north, south, east and west, and by
small stone circles (Fig. 6).
These structures and a great variety of others
enlarging on the themes of circle, mound and
32