Petroglyphs near the village of Sikachi-Alyan near Khabarovsk, which are more than 3 thousand years old, received the status of a particularly valuable object of cultural heritage, this is the first object in the Far East included in the State Code of especially valuable objects of cultural heritage of the peoples of the Russian Federation, the government of the Khabarovsk Territory reports.
“Monument of rock art“Sikachi-Alyan. Petroglyphs , located on the territory of the Khabarovsk Territory, has become the first and only cultural heritage site of the Far East, recognized as particularly valuable. The corresponding order was signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev,”the statement reads.
It is noted that today in the State Code of especially valuable objects of cultural heritage of the peoples of the Russian Federation there are the Moscow Kremlin, the historical, architectural and ethnographic museum-reserve "Kizhi", the museum-reserve "Peterhof", the State Hermitage, the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography named after Peter the Great (Kunstkamera).
The inclusion of petroglyphs in this list is an important step towards assigning the status of a UNESCO cultural heritage to images on stones. Work in this direction has been carried out since 2001, since 2003 it has been included in the preliminary list of UNESCO.
Petroglyphs are embossed or painted images on a stone base. The most famous petroglyphs in the Khabarovsk Territory are Sikachi-Alyan. Researchers have described about 300 petroglyphs, now there are about 200. In addition, in the middle of the 19th century, about 50 petroglyphs were found near the village of Sheremetyevo on the Ussuri (a tributary of the Amur). Petroglyphs are represented by stylized images of masks, anthropomorphic figures, images of animals, boats, cup recesses, concentric circles.