Saimaluu-Tash petroglyphs
Interesting facts
- The rock art can be dated with confidence only from the first millennium BC, when the Saka-Scythian 'animal style' appears on the stones.
- Scholars have suggested that the distinctive wasp-waisted, two-triangle figures may be the signature of a particular ethnic group of the Fergana valley.
- Scenes once read as ploughing are now mostly interpreted as chariots, drawn so simply that the vehicle shrinks to two small wheels.
- Most early carts are pulled by cattle; horses only become prominent towards the end of the Bronze Age, once people had learned to ride them well.
- Besides ibex, deer and wolves, the carvers depicted big cats described as lions, alongside hunting scenes with bows, clubs and spears.
- Kyrgyzstan's national UNESCO commission proposed the site for World Heritage listing on 29 January 2001, citing criteria iii, iv and vi.
- Several mountain rivers of the Naryn basin, among them the Kyldoo, Kök-Art and Kongur-Döbö, rise within the surrounding nature park.
- In 2021 Kyrgyzstan issued a set of postage stamps reproducing petroglyphs from Saimaluu-Tash.
Why it is worth it
Saimaluu-Tash, "the patterned stones" in Kyrgyz, is one of the great rock-art galleries of Asia, and one of the hardest to reach. High in the Fergana Range, at around 3,200 metres, two alpine valleys separated by a low ridge are strewn with boulders of dark rock, and on more than ten thousand of them people pecked images through the glossy black and grey desert varnish to the paler stone beneath. Estimates of the number of figures run as high as 98,000.
Most of the pictures date from the Bronze Age, roughly the third to the first millennium BC, with a smaller number from the Iron Age and later. The repertoire is vivid: ibex with sweeping horns, deer with great antlers, horses, bulls with elongated horns, wolves, hunters with bows and spears, fights, dances, two-wheeled carts and chariots drawn by oxen, sun-headed human figures that seem to belong to an early solar cult, and wavy lines like running water. One distinctive local style shows people and animals with wasp waists made of two triangles. Archaeologists divide the site into two parts; the larger, Saimaluu-Tash 1, stretches for about 3 km along ancient moraines, with a small lake that may have been a place of ritual. The site is still regarded as sacred and healing by many Kyrgyz.
Russian surveyors mapping a road between Jalal-Abad and Naryn heard from a shepherd about painted stones in 1902, and one of them, Nikolai Khludov, went to see them and reported his find to the archaeological society in Tashkent. The site was then largely forgotten until 1950, when systematic recording began. Since 2001 it has been protected within the Saimaluu-Tash nature park, about 320 square kilometres of high mountain country, and it is on Kyrgyzstan's tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage status.
Getting there
The usual base is the village of Kazarman, about 30 km north of the site, on the mountain road between Jalal-Abad and Naryn. From there a rough track suitable only for off-road vehicles leads part of the way, and the rest is a strenuous climb on foot or horseback of around half a day. Snow limits access to a short season around July. The nearest airport is Osh International (OSS), about 107 km away in a straight line but much further by road.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Saymaluu-Tash is a petroglyph site and a national park in Jalal-Abad Region, Kyrgyzstan, south of Kazarman. Over 10,000 stones bear pictures—perhaps as many as 98,000 pictures in all—which are black-and-white rock paintings, making the site a globally important collection of rock art. The pictures have been pecked into the near black or grey shiny desert varnish covering many rocks. Most pictures are from the Bronze Age and show animals, humans and symbols. They may partly be seen as a sacred display of offerings of the ancient people of the lower valley.
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