Friday, April 19, 2024

Mongolia – Some Petroglyphs in the Orkhon Valley

 



The guidebooks are not well geared towards petroglyphs. The Lonely Planet gives a few places and describes a place near the Russian border under the name Tsagaan Sala / Baga Oigar [1], it is the UNESCO World Heritage Monument Baga Oigar / Tsagaan Salaa (Бага ойгор-Цагаан салаагийн). This is really located far from possible travel routes - unless you come from Russia, which is currently not very likely. And the travel guidebook in German doesn't mention any petroglyphs at all [2].

Across the fence of the ger camp

That's why I recommend a spot in the Orkhon Valley (Орхоны хөндий), which is visited on the usual travel routes. The site is easy to find, it is located 150 meters south of a Ger camp. So, now comes my problem, because I haven't recorded the name of the Ger Camp, but I could easily identify it on Google Maps. There is no further information about the camp. I'll give the coordinates here [3]. Anyone who wants will find it; especially since most travelers have rented a furgon with a driver or are traveling in a group. The best way to get there is from Bat-Ölzii (Бат-Өлзий) or from Xujirt (Хужирт), also spelled Khujirt.

I've researched Mongolian sources, but you can only find a few things about them. Petroglyphs on the Russian border and nothing else at all about these petroglyphs in the Orkhon Valley. I then continued searching in German. Finally, I discovered an interesting dissertation from the University of Bonn [4]. This dissertation (Ph.D. thesis) is about archaeological finds in the Orkhon Valley. All the places that have been compiled so excellently, where a lot of details about graves can be found and petroglyphs also have been described, are all about 30 km northeast of the point I was looking for. It would have been too nice, but this dissertation is still an important source for me.

You can find Tamghas (Tamgas), these are clan signs of the last millennium. Incidentally, such signs can also be seen in the Ger Camp restaurant. Some characters could be assigned to the time of the Old Turks or even the Xiongnu (匈奴) - this is the Chinese name for the equestrian nomads who lived between the 3rd century BC and the late 1st century AD [5]. The pickled or punched rock paintings are mostly depictions of animals. The site in the Orkhon Valley does not have as many  animal species as I already knew from visits to Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan [6]. Goats can usually be seen in the Orkhon Valley. Rams, dogs or deer are also possible. These probably come from the late Bronze Age. The timing is problematic; B. Ahrens: “However, this requires sufficient comparison options in both spatial and chronological terms, which are currently only available to a limited extent or not at all for the Orkhon Valley or surrounding areas.” [7] The images available are mostly distorted to make the petroglyphs better visible.

I wouldn't want to bet on the age of these characters.

 Could even be an Altai wapiti (Aлтайский вапити),
also called Maral (Марал)



You can also see recent rock paintings, such as “Om mani padme hum” (ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པ་དྨེ་ཧཱུྃ).

Faint, but recognizable - ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པ་དྨེ་ཧཱུྃ


Links and Annotations:
[1] Michael Kohn: Mongolia. Lonely Planet Publications Ltd, 2008. ISBN: 101741045789. P. 222/223.
[2] Michael Walther and Peter Woeste: Mongolia. DuMont travel manual. Dumont Reiseverlag, Ostfildern 2019. ISBN: 3770181417. (Kann ja in die nächste Ausgabe hinein.)
[3] 46°54'00.6"N 102°24'44.7"E Ger Camp
[4] Birte Ahrens: Landscape archaeological investigations in the Upper Orkhon Valley, Central Mongolia. - Bonn, 2020. - Dissertation, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn.
Online edition in bonndoc: https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hbz:5-58667
[5] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiongnu “The Xiongnu Empire was the earliest and longest-lived steppe empire.”
[6] Petroglyphs at Tamgaly https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2014/10/petroglyphs-at-tamgaly.html and... I thought I had already reported on the petroglyphs of Cholpon-Ata, but I haven't yet.
[7] Ahrens op. cit. p. 126

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