Issyk-Kul Elder Discovers Ancient Stone Circles

A resident of the village of Shor-Bulak in the Ton district of the Issyk-Kul region, Kazykan Toygozhoev, has discovered ancient stone circles. The 82-year-old pensioner organized a photo shoot of the circles made of large stones in the mountains near his native Shor-Bulak, as well as about 30 kilometers from it – in the vicinity of the high-altitude village of Tuur-Suu.

As early as 1984, scientists from the Moscow Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR became interested in the first of the stone circles found by Toygozhoev, dating these circles to the third millennium BC and suggesting that they were "most likely related to a solar cult or a sky cult".

Thirty years later, this summer, Kazykan Toygozhoev is expecting archaeologists from Bishkek to visit him to familiarize them with a series of his new discoveries.

According to Toygozhoev, "there are many not only ancient stone circles in Shor-Bulak. Once, teenagers found an ancient figurine in the ground and handed it over to the school museum. Ancient pottery shards have also been frequently found."