Cholpon-Ata - petrogliphs

Some unique ancient monuments are located on territory of Cholpon-Ata town. There are Bronze Age settlement and ancient - sacred, place under open sky with stone painting. Andronic tribes or aria tribes (the middle II millennium - VIII century B.C.) gave us the artists who began creating these peculiar art galleries, which consist of thousand petrogliphs. The saka tribes (VIII - III centuries B.C.) made their contribution for further development of the rock painting. The saka's artists created rock drawings in socalled saka-scythian animal style of art, which attracts attention with their mastership and realistic images. The latest petroglyphs were dated by Turkic period (VI-IX centuries A.D.).

Issyk-Kul Open Air museum is most accessible and visitable part of North Issyk-Kul accumulation of the petroglyphs. That site was gigantic temple under open sky, which occupied western part of modern Cholpon-Ata town, and where ancient people worshipped to celestial bodies and did sacraments and mysteries. The rock paintings took an important sacramental role in realizing rituals. They were some kind of virtual sacrifice and prayer, printed on the stone. Alongside with the petroglyphs, there are stone circles, perhaps an ancient kin sacred sites with an interesting natural phenomena - geomagnetic propitious fields. There are some grounds for suppositions, that big stone circles (some tens meters - in diameter) used as astronomy observatories.

Issyk-Kul petroglyphs are unlque In many aspects. First, because of artistic realism of the images, many rock drawings belong to masterpieces of Saka-Scythian animal style art. Secondly, the sizes of some petroglyphs are more than one meter which is really rare. At third, many scenes and subjects are original, typical only for North Issyk-Kul petroglyphs. At forth, a technique of making some - paintings, for example a relief image of deer, fulfilled with the usage as natural prominences of the stone.

The central petroglyph in low part of the museum is an embodiment of all unique features. There is a flock of rock goats (teke or ibex). The figures of ibexes, perhaps the biggest in Central Asia presented with unusual expression that allows attributing this petroglyph to outstanding masterpiece Saka-Scythian animal style of art. The figures of hunters and tame-breeding bars (snow leopards) during penned hunt are one the background of the rock painting. This kind of driving off hunt existed in Ancient Egypt, where hunters used cheetah in hunting of antelope. By the way, there is a petroglyph with images of hunting dynamically leopards in the museum. This petroglyph has not analogies in Central Asia.