Petroglyphs on the Bottom of the Sayan Sea (Mount Aldy-Mozaga)

Abstract

In Tuva, as in other regions of northern and central Asia, one encounters among cliff images not only masks, but also little figures of people in horned headgear. Such headgear is associated in the final analysis with ancient totemic notions. Among the Sayan Canyon petroglyphs, anthropomorphic images can hypothetically be regarded as proto-shamanic. Particularly noteworthy from the point of view of the genesis of shamanism is a complete anthropomorphic figure carved on a slab at the foot of Mount Aldy-Mozaga (stone 29) [see Figure 17]. The personage, with arms-wings, is depicted in horned headgear and face carvings signifying lines of paint or tattoos. His clothing is reminiscent of the costume of a Siberian shaman: a breastplate is depicted; from his trunk emanates lines that could be pendants, braids, or fringes, like the traditional attributes of a shaman's costume, symbolizing the ability of shaman to fly.61 There are two wearable masks alongside the personage; he is holding one, while the other is next to it. One of the masks has a "ferocious" facial expression, with bared teeth. They are smaller than the face of the anthropomorphic figure in the same way the mask-images carved on the Sayan Canyon cliffs are usually smaller than the face of an adult. The creators of the petroglyphs probably regarded this figure as the image of an ancestor-shaman. Okunevo anthropomorphic sculptures sometimes show a breastplate, which researchers have compared with the attributes of a shaman's costume. Karasuk breastplates, according to the evidence of E.B. Vadetskaia, represent a unique paleoethnographic source, but they have not been reconstructed.62 The lack of a drum should not be surprising. Such attributes as drums appear—in the opinion of many researchers—relatively late. An exception may be the little circles descending downward from the arms bent at the elbows of the anthropomorphic personage from Sagan-Zab on Lake Baikal,63 although their identification as drums, in my opinion, is not indisputable. The figure of the proto-shaman on the Aldy-Mozaga cliffs does not have analogues among Siberian Bronze Age petroglyphs.