Petroglyphs
Within the Mongolian Altai, all open-air petroglyphic imagery surviving from the pre-Modern period is engraved, scratched, gouged or pecked into the surface of bedrock or boulders; for this reason, this imagery is referred to as petroglyphic rather than pictographic. Petroglyphs are represented by single images or by compositions of two or more images up to several hundred motifs.
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Images of elk and wild goats on a small red boulder. Bronze Age, Late Bronze Age, and Iron Age. Baga Khatugiin Gol. The sandstone boulder has acquired a deep red surface patina, which reveals the scrapes and gouges of ancient glacial action. The various degrees of patination visible in the images indicate a variety of periods.
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Caravan scene. Bronze Age. Tsagaan Salaa/Baga Oigor complex. In the upper section of the low boulder are several yak in a row; one carries a basket on its back in which stands a child. The cruder images on the lower right were probably done considerably later. Although the boulder rests on a terrace about 100 m above the valley, it displays significant glacial scrape. The discoloration of the boulder’s broken skin is the result of weather, wind, and the corrosive effect of rodent urine over thousands of years.
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Argali. Bronze Age. Valley of Khar Yamaa Gol. The alert, fine execution of this small image (L. 7 cm) indicates a date in the Bronze Age. The hardened skin of the outcropping, scraped by ancient glaciers, has cracked and been covered by lichen.
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Woman in a tall headdress with animals. Early Iron Age. Upper Tsagaan Gol complex. The woman wears the kind of tall headdress recovered from frozen burials at Pazyryk and Akh-Alakha in the Russian Altai Republic. The satiny sheen of the stone’s surface indicates siltstone.
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Hunter and tethered horse. Bronze Age. Upper Tsagaan Gol complex. This is a detail of a larger scene of a deer hunt with two archers. In this detail, the archer seems to hold an arrow with one hand and his bow with the other; his slender body is crouched, as if in anticipation of the shoot. The presence of the tethered horse indicates that the composition was done when people were already riding horses but not necessarily hunting from them. This horizontal bedrock surface is deeply scraped and polished by glacial action, creating an elegant surface for the pecked images.
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Scene of combat, detail of a larger composition. Bronze Age. Upper Tsagaan Gol complex. In this curious scene pecked into the upper surface of a small boulder, four men are in combat using daggers and bows. The nature of the fence–like structure above the figures is uncertain, but the wealth of detail here suggests a pictorial rendition of a real event or of a well known tale. The fine pecking, the weapons, the long objects hanging from the figures’ waists, and the lack of riding horses indicate a Bronze Age date.
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Overlaid images of deer on a vertical outcropping. Bronze and Iron Age. Upper Tsagaan Gol complex. The fine animals were executed in the Bronze Age but have been re–scraped and gouged in a more recent period. The images done in broad, soft silhouettes were probably executed in the Iron Age––between the time of the original, fine images and their re-scraping.
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Hunt scene, detail from a larger composition. Bronze Age. Upper Tsagaan Gol complex. On a small boulder with a fine red skin, an ancient artist pecked a large hunt scene including eight archers with long bows and more than seventy animals, some only 2 cm. long.
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Hunters and moose. Late Bronze Age. Tsagaan Salaa/Baga Oigor complex. In this scene pecked on a broken outcropping, hunters and their dogs surround two bull moose. The composition indicates the nature of hunting for large animals: with several men and many dogs. The style in which the animals and men are rendered and their weaponry indicates the date. However, the appearance of a moose––an animal dependent on far more riparian vegetation than has existed in this region for thousands of years––indicates a date not any later than 3000 cal yr. BP.
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Bear and horse images on an inverted boulder. Pre–Bronze Age. Tsagaan Salaa/Baga Oigor complex. The images on this boulder have the heavy bodies and tapered legs characteristic of animal imagery of the late Paleolithic period. Their inverted positions indicate that the boulder was originally in a location higher in the valley and was washed out and tumbled down to its present location, most probably in the course of a major flood.
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Syncretic animal. Bronze Age. Tsagaan Salaa/Baga Oigor complex. This animal has the long tail and square body of a bull and the antlers of a deer. It is unusual but not unique: similar animals can be occasionally found in Bayan Ölgiy as well as at the petroglyphic site of Kalbak–Tash, in the Altai Republic. There is a small figure, as of a woman, on the animal’s back and other animals pecked elsewhere on the stone. This is a low boulder with a fine red skin and many signs of water wear.
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Interlocking images of stylized deer. Late Bronze Age. Upper Tsagaan Gol complex. With exaggeratedly long antlers and bodies, and with heads reminiscent of long–beaked birds, these are images of stylized deer such as are found on Mongolian deer stones. The artist has rendered them in an interlocked composition and with a controlled stippling that suggest a tattoo. This composition is, to date, unique within North Asian rock art.
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Frontal figure with raised arms. Pre-Bronze Age. Khöltsöötiin Gol complex. This figure, one of several rendered in a similar manner and on a series of large outcroppings over the river, may be a birthing female. The posture, the extremely rough, deep pecking, and the dark patina indicate a very early date, perhaps even Paleolithic.
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Large ibex. Early Bronze Age. Khöltsöötiin Gol complex. This powerful animal has the body and long horn(s) of an ibex, an animal that barely survives into the present in rugged mountainous regions of Bayan Ölgiy. The image was only partially completed: it is probable that the artist intended to finish pecking out its neck and body, here marked by a lightly pecked outline. The other elements around the ibex are not decipherable.
