The Great Steppe seemed empty for centuries: grass, wind, rare mounds, as if there was nothing to see. Until they looked at her from above. In this issue, we collect into one chain six real finds from Kazakhstan that were hidden in plain sight and which, logically, should not exist. Giant Turgai geoglyphs, visible only from orbit and found by ordinary people in satellite images. Botai, where, perhaps, for the first time in the world, a man bridled a horse, and where genetics have recently turned the usual history of the horse upside down. The golden man from Issyk and a silver bowl with an inscription that cannot be read for half a century. Tamgaly gorge with mysterious sun-headed figures. The frozen mounds of Berel, where horses in golden masks lay in the ice for two and a half thousand years with their fur preserved. And the stone giant Akyrtas, abandoned halfway without a single inscription about who built it and why. One steppe, one view from above, and a lot of unanswered questions.

Issue topics:
🛰️ Turgai geoglyphs, drawings for the view from the sky
☀️ Tamgals and people with the sun instead of a head
🐎 Botai and dispute about the first horseman of the planet
🏛️ Akyrtas, unfinished stone giant
👑 Golden man and unread inscription
❄️ Berel, riders and horses in the ice

Sources I used to write the script:

Gaunitz, C., Orlando, L. et al. “Ancient genomes revisit the ancestry of domestic and Przewalski’s horses.” Science, 2018.
Outram, A. K., Olsen, S. et al. “The Earliest Horse Harnessing and Milking.” Science, 2009.
Olsen, S. L. “Horses and Humans: The Evolution of Human-Equine Relationships.” BAR International Series, 2006.
Seibert V.F. “Botai culture.” Almaty, 2011.
Akishev K. A. “Issyk Kurgan. The art of the Sakas of Kazakhstan." Moscow, 1978.
Bonmann, S., Halfmann, J., Korobzow, N., Bobomulloev, B. “A partial decipherment of the unknown Kushan script.” Transactions of the Philological Society, 2023.
Samashev, Z., Francfort, H.-P., Lepetz, S. Publications on the Berel necropolis (Les chevaux de Berel’ and others), 1998–2011.
Rogozhinsky A.E. “Petroglyphs of the archaeological landscape of Tamgaly.” Almaty, UNESCO nomination dossier, 2004.
Baipakov K. M. Works on the medieval cities of Kazakhstan and the Akyrtas complex.
Blumenthal, R. "NASA Adds to Evidence of Mysterious Ancient Earthworks." The New York Times, 2015.

The video is educational and popular science in nature. All archaeological finds, historical events and scientific data are based on published research and the work of specialists cited in the sources. Issues on which there is no consensus among scientists are presented as existing scientific hypotheses and interpretations, rather than as established facts.

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