Birds on the rocks: once again about the images of birds in the petroglyphs of the Altai

The article publishes some petroglyphs with images of birds, recently examined by the author in the south of the Russian Altai. Unlike other wild and domestic animals (mountain goats, bulls, deer, and predators), representatives of avifauna appear quite rarely in rock art of the region despite the fact that the bird was a dominant protagonist playing an important role in the archaic mythology of many peoples, inhabitant of the “upper world,” and mediator between the worlds of people and gods. Human contacts with fantastic birds were described in a number of ancient written sources. The semantics of petroglyphs with ornithomorphic characters can be reconstructed using mythology of the ancient inhabitants of Eurasia as visual representation of its main plots. Various compositions with waterfowl, birds of prey, and legged birds, including the scene of attacking ungulates by birds of prey have been found in the Russian and Mongolian Altai. Despite a small number of images of birds, the main scene, repeatedly appearing in rock art, is a bird hunt of anthropomorphic character. The scene in which a man with the bow is shooting at a bird, appears on petroglyphs of different periods from the Bronze Age to the Middle Ages (Old Turkic period). Obviously, the scenes depicting an archer hunting various birds (birds of prey, such as eagle, kite, or vulture, as well as cranes or snowcocks) reproduce a mythological plot which played an important role in mythological beliefs of the ancient population of the Altai. The depiction of waterfowl or partridge hunting scenes could be associated with the role of these birds as a source of food and raw material for arrow fletching.