ASTANA — Cave sediments may help identify ancient human populations in Kazakhstan even where no skeletal remains survive, as new methods allow archaeologists to reconstruct how people lived and adapted to environmental change tens of thousands of years ago. Photo credit: Ministry of Culture and Information Researchers are turning their attention to Tuttybulaq 1 and Aqtogai, two cave sites in the Karatau range of southern Kazakhstan.
Abay Namen. Photo credit: Namen’s personal archives “Our work will aim to expand the existing test excavations and determine the palaeoecological setting and human adaptations to the climatic instabilities,” Abay Namen, a postdoctoral researcher at Nazarbayev University’s School of Sciences and Humanities, told The Astana Times during an archaeological symposium in Astana on Sept.
24-25. Caves can preserve evidence that is often lost at exposed archaeological sites. Organic material is more likely to survive in enclosed caves and rock shelters, while ancient DNA can remain in sediment even when human bones are absent. This can help researchers determine which hominins – modern humans or their extinct relatives – once occupied a site.
Namen’s research combines cave excavations in southern Kazakhstan with work at open-air sites in the Almaty Region in collaboration with the National Museum of Kazakhstan and New York University. The project examines human behavior and adaptation during the last glacial cycle, approximately 115,000 to 11,700 years ago.
The research was among the topics discussed at the symposium, organized by the Margulan Institute of Archaeology and Nazarbayev University to mark the institute’s 35th anniversary. More than 150 researchers from Kazakhstan and abroad participated in the event. Tracing Kazakhstan’s earliest inhabitants The country has accumulated substantial Stone Age material since the early 1990s, when a major Kazakh-Russian program began investigating Paleolithic sites across Kazakhstan.
Over the past 10 to 15 years, new dating methods have allowed archaeologists to establish more precise timelines for many of those discoveries. Talgat Mamirov of the Margulan Institute of Archaeology pointed to a series of stratified Upper Paleolithic sites in southern and southeastern Kazakhstan, including Rakhat, Uzynagash and Maibulak.
Talgat Mamirov. Photo credit: Mamirov’s personal archives