Similarity of the earliest rock art in South Siberia and Central Asia and the issue of their attribution

The paper deals with the issue of chronological attribution of the earliest rock art in several adjacent regions of South Siberia and Central Asia such as the Minusinsk Depression, the Altai Republic, northwestern Mongolia, Western Sayan Mountains and southern Tuva (Fig. 1-4). It reviews shared stylistical traits, iconography and repertoire of main animalistic images discussing the nature and causes of this similarity. It also provides a map showing distribution of the rock images from the earliest layer (Fig. 5). Relevance of the issue of their dating is explained by the fact that they do not have any archaeological «links» as no figurative materials of this style have been discovered in closed assemblages. We can only argue that they are older than the images attributed to the Okunevo-Karakol traditions. Scholars have proposed various dates ranging from the Upper Paleolithic to the Early Bronze Age; the attribution to the Afanasyevo culture has been proposed; however, so far, none of the versions seems well justified. In the author's opinion, probability of this figurative layer dating to the Stone Age is quite high, though there are no sufficient data to narrow down the time interval. To address this issue, it is necessary to expand the corps of sources, make more accurate records of the sites and conduct interdisciplinary studies including use of direct dating methods (such as uranium-thorium dating of the calcite over the rock images, etc.).