© OpenStreetMap
Nature
12 km away
Surkhan State Nature Reserve
Nature reserve founded in 1986 in Sherobod district, with a mountain section in the Kugitang range and the riverine forest of Paygʻambar island on the Amu Darya.
Zarautsoy Rock Paintings
Ochre paintings of hunters, bulls, gazelles and wild goats in a rock shelter of the Zarautsoy gorge, Sherobod district, from the Mesolithic or Neolithic.
ArchaeologyUNESCO World HeritageMesolithic–NeolithicAbout 3 hours to see
About the place
The paintings are on the walls of a rock shelter in a gorge of the south-western Hissar foothills, about 100 km from Termez. A hunter reported them in 1939 to the director of the regional museum, who studied them in the 1940s. Scholars date them to the Mesolithic or Neolithic, roughly the 12th to 5th millennia BC.
Painted in several shades of ochre, the figures are small, from 4 to 20 cm. Hunters, some dressed as birds, stalk wild bulls; others hunt gazelles and screw-horned goats with dogs and bows. The animals are drawn realistically in profile, the people schematically. Some later images carry Arabic inscriptions. The site is on Uzbekistan's tentative list for World Heritage.
Why go
- Some of the oldest rock art in Central Asia
- Hunting scenes with bird-masked figures
- A mountain gorge in Surkhandarya
Sources (4)
Nearby
Archaeology32 km away
Djarkutan
A Bronze Age proto-town near Sherabad in southern Uzbekistan, with a citadel, a fire temple, craft quarters and a large cemetery.
Mausoleums36 km away
Imam at-Tirmidhi Mausoleum
The tomb near Sherabad of al-Tirmidhi (824–892), compiler of one of the six canonical hadith collections.
- © OpenStreetMapArchaeology
37 km away
Uzundara Fortress
Hellenistic mountain fortress of the 3rd–2nd centuries BC on the Susiztog ridge near Boysun, found in 1991, with about 1 km of walls and at least 13 towers.
