City of Aydarken

Aydarken – a small town and industrial center in the central part of the Batken region.

The population is 9,926 people (2017). It is located in a mountain plain basin (at an altitude of about 2000 meters), formed by one of the tributaries of the Ak-Suu River. The basin is surrounded by the mountains of the Alai Ridge. A road leads to Aydarken from the Fergana Valley, continuing towards Kanibadam. The district center is located 45 kilometers east of Aydarken.

The town grew on the site of the Kyrgyz village of Haidarkan, based on the Haidarkan Mercury Plant (Plant No. 5), the construction of which began in 1941 at the Haidarkan deposit (discovered in 1926 by students V. I. Popov and V. E. Poyarkov, who worked as prospectors in the party of the "Rare Elements" trust) of mercury ores ("haidarkan" means "great ore mine"). However, even before the development of the deposit, there was a settlement of Kyrgyz herders of the same name.

By the law of the Kyrgyz Republic "On the Renaming of Certain Village and Settlement Councils, Towns of Urban Type, and Villages of the Kadamjay District of the Batken Region of the Kyrgyz Republic" No. 228 dated December 28, 2006, the village of Haidarkan was renamed Aydarken. In 2012, the urban-type settlement Aydarken was granted city status.

Aydarken is known for the Sel-Unkur Cave. In 1985, the oldest traces of humans in Central Asia were discovered there, with a multilayered site known for archaeological finds. The anthropological materials found by Soviet archaeologists in the cave (a skull, teeth (three upper incisors, three lower premolars), and a human humerus) were presumably interpreted as belonging to a human of one of the archaic erectoid forms. The somewhat controversial dating of the complex to over 1 million years ago has not been confirmed in light of recent data. Russian researchers date the teeth and humerus to about 126,000 years ago.

Today, Sel-Unkur is a tourist attraction.