The valleys of Gomy Altai are a real treasure-house for archeologists. Here, in this rich land with a great variety of animals and plants, different tribes, replacing each other, have left a valuable evidence of their existence for researchers. In the beginning of the 1st millennium B.C. one of the most original cultures of the Scythian world-Pazyryk culture was formed here. Many ancient mummies and well-preserved clothes, weapons, jewelry, domestic utensils with animal ornaments have been found in ice-filled burial mounds of the Pazyryk stow and the Ukok plateau. In the final years of the 1st millennium B.C. their owners were conquered by Hunnus.* Then, driven by Central-Asiatic tribes, the nomadic tribes from neighboring regions of Tuva and Northern Mongolia "gushed" to these places. Later on, in the middle of the 1st millennium A.D. Zhuzhans** moved bellicose Turks to the southern spurs of Altai. The latter united all local tribes and together with the North Chinese Empire defeated Zhuzhans and set up their own state subduing all memacls of the steppe belt of Eurasia from the Black to the Yellow Sea. Monuments of the aforesaid period - kurgans, cave drawings, stone sculptures, runic inscriptions-have been studied well enough. Considerably less is known about those that appeared in the 2nd-5th centuries. Of course, researchers came across some of them already back in the 19th century, but target research began only in the last twenty years. As a result of excava- * Hunnus - an ancient nomadic people living in Central Asia. Part of them moved to the west, where they mixed with the aborigines and formed a new nation-Huns. -Ed. ** Zhuzhans - a community of nomadic tribes living in the steppes of Western Manchuria, Mongolia and Turkestan in early Middle Ages. - Ed. Pages. 68 Burial in kurgan No. 19. Findings from kurgan No. 19: an iron buckle, a knife, iron and bone arrow-heads. tions, specialists of Kemerovo and Gomy Altai universities picked out Cock ... Читать далее