30 years ago in Siberia, scientists discovered mammoth tusks with drawings on them. The study of this find was constantly postponed, and now the hour has finally come when scientists have solved the riddle of this subject. It turned out that these prints, which are approximately 13,000 years old, are the earliest known drawings of camels ever found in Asia.
A team from the Khakass Research Institute of Russian Language, Literature and History examined a tusk found in the lower reaches of the Tom River in Siberia. According to the author of the study, Yuri Yesin, a camel fight was depicted on a one and a half meter tusk, as well as a man who changed into an animal. Perhaps it was a way of showing how hunters dress up to get close to animals and kill or capture them, the team explained.
The peculiarities of the image are that on these tusks, animals are visible that are fighting among themselves, but at the same time they have traces of wounds from arrows. This testifies to the fact that in those days people hunted camels. "A comparative analysis of the stylistic features of the figures of camels shows that they correspond to the age of the tusk itself, which makes them the most ancient depictions of camels in Asia today," the authors comment.
Also, the researchers note that the find of engravings in the region "is consistent with the theory of population movement to Western Siberia at the end of the Late Paleolithic." These drawings show how important camel fighting and hunting were to the culture of the community that created these works. As the authors note, such hunting was most likely seasonal.
A schematic representation of camels.
Yuri Yevin says that very little is known about the ancient people who lived in this area of Siberia, but there is evidence that they hunted mammoths, and, as it turned out, camels. The research itself was not easy for scientists, because by the time they began to study the tusk, it had already begun to break and crack due to "improper storage." In addition to the fact that the surface of the find was in poor condition, the difficulty of the study was that the engravings could only be examined by rolling the tusk.
“The engravings on the tusk of the Tom River have certain peculiarities that complicate their documentation. They have very thin and shallow lines, which makes them barely noticeable and tedious to track as they sit on the surface of a curved, long and heavy object,”the authors comment.
The image on the tusk.
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The researchers also note that there is a certain similarity of some stylistic features and content on the Tom River tusk and in European art. The reason for this is not only the epochal features of human culture, but also the fact that some traditions have been inherited through space and time.