Ulaanbaatar
Earliest discovered rock art of Mongolia
Art & Culture
Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ Rock art is one of the cultural heritages that Mongolia boasts about to the world. We hereby present you the most remarkable/oldest petroglyphs/rock carvings and pictographs/rock paintings found by Mongolian archaeologists as named by honored scientific worker, lecturer of the Ulaanbaatar University, archaeologist D.Erdenebaatar.
The first petroglyphs and pictographs
It is believed that the archaic humans that lived in the territory of present-time Mongolia started depicting what they have perceived around 40,000 to 10,000 years back. The rock art on the Javkhlant Sacred Mountain in Khanbogd soum, Umnugobi aimag as well as the Dalan Khar Mountain in Nomgon soum, Umnugobi aimag proves that the art form was there even before the Khoit Tsenkher Cave Rock Paintings in Mankhan soum, Khovd aimag, which had been considered as the oldest.. The artworks on the two mountains presumably date back 100,000 to 40,000 years. They are thus valued as the oldest fine artworks and the primary source of intellectual culture in Mongolia.
The first rock art depicting the Solar deity
This stone carving on the aforementioned Dalan Khar Mountain is not only a part of the earliest known rock art, dating back 40,000 years, but the first ever portrayal of the Solar deity.
The first rock art depicting flying objects
This petroglyph of rockets and other flying objects on the Dalan Khar Mountain is also part of the earliest known rock art by which the archaic humans represented the flying objects they saw.
The first ‘lenticular’ rock art
This work here depicts a person praying to the sky when viewed from a southeastern angle, but a human’s face when viewed from a southwestern angle, and proves that faith and art forms existed in the Stone Age. There is also a pictograph painted with this technique around 10,000 years ago in the Later Stone Age.
The first rock art depicting a man worshipping the sky
The first map called the 'Autumn Memories'
There is a petroglyph of three head-like shapes in a vertical line among the rock art on the Javkhlant Mountain and can be considered a handmade map including the sacred mountain, which is comprised of three peaks lining up from south to north.
The first rock art depicting the Sun
The first rock art depicting the Solar system
It is a part of the Javkhlant Mountain rock art.
