The Ustyurt Plateau: a nuclear test site and a paradise for ufologists. Ustyurt plateau: location, description Stone giants of the Ustyurt plateau

Sometimes you are very surprised how many various materials of the study of the territory of the USSR were lost (destroyed or settled forever in the archives) during its collapse. From our geology, geography, archeology and similar sciences, a 10-year-old work was actually thrown out, in which there were many truly unique discoveries on a planetary scale.

In Central Asia, on the territory of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, between the Mangyshlak peninsula in the west, the remains of the Aral Sea and the Amudarya delta in the east, there is a giant Ustyurt table plateau. In some places, it breaks off to the surrounding plain with steep cliffs - chinks, up to 350 m high. You have to drive many kilometers along the foot of this wall until you find a place to climb up. The surface of the plateau is occupied by a saline desert.

Due to its climatic conditions, the complete absence of water and remoteness from modern routes, even now Ustyurt has been studied much worse than the famous Karakum. But the main mystery of Ustyurt is not in geology or geography. She is in his story.

In the 1970s, a topographic map of the plateau was surveyed. This was done using modern methods - based on photogrammetry, for which aerial photography of the entire plateau was ordered. And so, while studying one of the districts of Ustyurt, cartographers found some strange lines in the pictures, apparently of artificial origin. The lines developed into arrow-shaped signs of enormous length (800-900 m), directed by "points" to the north. The tips of these "arrows" have round pits in the corners of the lines, and the arrow itself is formed by stone ramparts dilapidated from time to time. The height of the ramparts is now a little less than a meter, but judging by the debris around, it used to be much higher. Most of all, the scheme of the "arrow-shaped layouts of Ustyurt" resembles a giant military map, on which the direction of the troops' attacks is indicated by bold arrows.

The cyclopean system of "arrows" was traced for more than 100 km. It surpasses in its scale the much more famous system of lines and drawings in the Peruvian Nazca desert - the only archaeological phenomenon comparable in scale. Just like in Nazca, the "arrows" cannot be seen from the height of human growth. There are no significant elevations on the flat surface of the plateau.

In the area of ​​arrows (even before they were discovered), a whole complex of archaeological monuments was found - mounds, burials, places of worship. The latest ones date back to the 10th-15th centuries, but most are undoubtedly much older.

As in Peru, archaeologists have not come to an unambiguous conclusion about the purpose of the "arrows" of Ustyurt. It is assumed that these could be structures for giant driven hunts for herds of kulans and saigas (but why then so many “arrows”?). It could be water collection facilities, or something else. But looking at the photographs of these “arrows”, you still can’t get rid of the thought that their secret can be almost inseparable from the mystery of the drawings of the Nazca desert ...

The Ustyurt Plateau is a huge territory with an area of ​​about 200,000 square kilometers, until the 80s of the last century it was a kind of archaeological reserve, a solid "blank spot" on the map of history. But in 1986, scientists from the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan decided to examine the medieval monuments of architecture from the air, and discovered something completely mysterious. The territory between the villages of Sai-Utes and Beineu was streaked with strange drawings, visible only from the air, which were very reminiscent of similar drawings in the Nazca desert.

The arrows, as scientists called them, stretched in an almost continuous chain from Cape Duan in the Aral Sea deep into the Ustyurt plateau. They differ little from each other in shape and size, and are deployed to the north. Each is like a sack with a retracted upper part with a wide passage to which the guide shaft leads. The upper edges of the bag form two arrows with tips in the form of an elongated triangle, into which a narrow passage leads from the body of the arrow. At the tops of the triangle there are rings with a diameter of 10 m, which were once, probably, pits. The length of each boom is 800 - 900 meters, and together with the guide shaft it reaches 1500 meters, the width is 400 - 600 meters, the height of the fence reaches 80 cm, but in the past it was much higher.

This entire system of drawings-arrows on the Ustyurt plateau can be traced over a territory of 100 km, but scientists believe that it is much larger and exceeds in its length the system of mysterious drawings in the Nazca desert.

All arrows are slightly different from each other - in some the tips are made in straight lines, in others they are concave. In some drawings, the lines of some arrows overlap with the outlines of others. This, according to scientists, is explained by the fact that new ones were erected on the site of the outdated structures.

On the ground, the arrow can be identified by a barely visible stone ridge, in which traces of the bonding mortar are visible. An earthen ditch was dug from the inside of the bag, the earth from which formed a shaft, on which a stone ridge was installed. Green grass grows wildly along the entire moat, which is clearly visible against the background of withered grass on the plateau. It is easy to determine the outlines of an arrow from this green grass.

What were these arrows for? There are not so many hypotheses - only two. The Ustyurt Plateau is a rocky upland. There are no trees, open reservoirs and rivers on the plateau, but from deep (up to 60 m) wells you can get slightly brackish water. There is no rain in summer, and the total amount of precipitation, together with snow, is up to 150 mm per year. The grasses dry up, and the steppe becomes yellow-gray, and juicy green grass grows along the arrows, that is, even now more moisture is accumulating there. This led scientists to the idea that the arrows are ancient flooding structures.

Ditches with ramparts on the outside blocked the flow of water from the entire interior and directed it to the arrow-shaped triangles located below - reservoirs. Ring-shaped recesses in the corners of the triangles (former deep pits) served as reservoirs for water.

Archaeologist Vadim Nikolaevich Yagodin (Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences), according to the found fragments of ceramics belonging to the 7th-8th centuries and located in a later cultural layer, relates this date to the upper limit of the arrow-raising period, and it is not known how long ago the lower limit goes.

But another archaeologist, Lev Leonidovich Galkin, head of the Volga-Ural expedition, believes that arrows are ancient cattle pens. Some arrow pens are lined with flat stones, driven with narrow ends into the ground and sticking flat plates upwards, these are probably the latest “pen” structures. The nomads called the corrals "arans". According to Galkin, nomadic tribes began to create arans as early as the 14th-12th centuries BC, that is, in the Bronze Age. The date was established by a stone arrowhead found among the stones of the mound, there is no other evidence yet.

In the same area there is a place called Kalamkas. It is named after a girl who, according to a legend existing in this area, died during the driving of mouflons, falling into a pit along with animals. The tradition of building arans, according to local residents, lasted until the 19th century, when huge herds of saigas, mouflons (mountain sheep), kulans and wild horses - tarpans roamed the Ustyurt plateau.

The Ustyurt Plateau is located between the Mangyshlak Peninsula and the Kara-Bogaz-Gol Bay, the Aral Sea and the Kara-Kum and Kyzyl-Kum deserts. At present, the plateau rises 180-300 meters above the plain. The edges of the plateau are called chinks, and you can climb them up only in certain places. The main landscape of the plateau is a desert with almost no vegetation and water. The ground water that occurs in these deposits is salty and undrinkable, except for a few known wells. There are harsh (up to -40 degrees) winters and scorching, drying up all living things in summer. And wind. An exhausting wind constantly blowing in different directions.

Once upon a time, this place was the sea Tethys. On the plateau you can see clusters of shells, and some layers of the plateau are solid shell rock. Reminiscent of the sea and stone balls - iron-manganese nodules, once formed at the bottom of the sea, and found at the lower level of the relief. When the rocks around them were weathered, they appeared on the surface of the plateau. The limestone-chalk slopes of the plateau are a truly bewitching sight, like a fantastic world of another reality.

And ancient people once lived in these places, a culture unknown to us was born, although then, perhaps, the climate was somewhat different. What can be said about the ancient builders of these arrows? A huge complex of mysterious unique religious buildings and huge burial grounds was found in the area of ​​arrows ancient nomads, no doubt somehow connected with the builders of arrows. As a result, the previously unknown ancient nomadic culture of Ustyurt was discovered. Who are these people?

The first issue of the Kazakh-language version of the popular science magazine National Geographic, recently presented in Aktau, is dedicated to the nature of the Mangistau region. In particular, the Ustyurt plateau is one of the most beautiful and mysterious places in the region.

"Ustyurt, a table plateau, between the Mangyshlak peninsula in the west, the Aral Sea and the Amu Darya delta in the east. Height up to 370 meters. Limited by steep cliffs - chinks (150 meters high or more). Wormwood-saltwort desert. Oil and gas field" (Soviet encyclopedic dictionary, 1988).

Photo by Andrey Astafiev

Gas stations for UFOs

Death Mounds

The military was blown away by the wind. Just a couple of hours ago, here, in the field camp near the well of Kentykty, life was in full swing, strictly adjusted and active, but unintelligible to the local environment. Heavy trucks, tightly covered with tarpaulins, drove up and drove off. People in protective uniforms fussed, machine guns rattled from helicopters, at low level flight, chasing a frightened saiga to death. The camp kitchen fires smoked. At the mouth of the well, drilled by a field self-propelled unit, some strange instruments crackled.

Suddenly the earth shook, it swelled up with a giant abscess and burst. A tall geyser burst out into the sky, faded from the merciless sun. Instruments howled and chirped like rattles gone mad.

A few minutes of ominous silence - and the flight began. The military jumped into trucks, climbed onto helicopters, and all this equipment disappeared over the horizon in a moment.

And then people came from nearby distant pastures and began to take away everything that the escaped military had thrown in a hurry and panic. Tents, field kitchens and electrical installations, food from a military warehouse, cups, spoons and plates of half-eaten stew from plank tables, these tables themselves. As well as incomprehensible devices that switched from an outrageous squeal to a frequent, but already quite acceptable crackling for the shepherd's ear, accustomed to the silence of the desert.

Those who were more inquisitive climbed a mound 30 meters high, swollen at the site of the well, looked into the funnel, shook their heads and muttered something about the shaitan who turned the stone core of the earth inside out.

Few of these people have survived to this day. Who died of age, who even earlier was carried away by a strange, previously unknown disease in these places, which in a few years turned strong and flourishing men into walking skeletons.

Only later, during the intensification of the Semipalatinsk-Nevada movement, it was found that in Ustyurt, in the area of ​​the Buzachi peninsula, where the largest oil and condensate deposits in Kazakhstan, Kalamkas and Karazhanbas, are now being developed, the military carried out three underground nuclear explosions. For strategic purposes. It was assumed in the giant voids formed after such explosions and limited by limestones fused from atomic heat into mirror-smooth volcanic glass, to store fuel and drinking water in case of a global war.

Two explosions were more or less successful, and during the third there was a release. So the soldiers fled. Tea, not "cult-personal" times to die of radiation sickness for the Motherland, for Stalin.

One of these three mounds with a dome that has collapsed to the very damn nuclear kitchen is still "siphoning" several thousand micro-roentgens per hour.

God cursed this land

In general, the military has been dabbling here since time immemorial. And it is difficult to say what other memory they left about themselves in the chinks and in the tracts of Ustyurt. A local archaeologist, an employee of the regional museum of local history, Andrei Astafyev, more than once found fragments of rockets and the remains of military aircraft on the plateau. He also descended into one of the craters left after the builders of the underground strategic storages. The one, of course, which now rings within relatively safe limits.

The economic development of these wild and desert places is still constrained by harsh climatic conditions, lack of water and their remoteness from the centers of civilization. If you try to cross the plateau by car, you need to do it on a very reliable vehicle, with a good supply of fuel, food, and most importantly, water. The length of this flat hill is 500-600 kilometers, and you can drive through it without meeting a single car, not a single living, human soul. So if your car breaks down, this fact can grow into a very serious problem.

Once upon a time, back when Aktau was in the status of a secret mailbox, this city (then Shevchenko) was practically cut off from the mainland. The only way out of here was by sea or air. Or along a single-track "piece of iron", the brainchild of a shock Komsomol construction site (in these places there is even a village called Komsomolsk-on-Ustyurt, on the territory of Karakalpakstan), but in such a roundabout way and with such a number of stops in anticipation of an oncoming stagecoach that it will be faster on foot. In those days, among the local drivers, the profession of "caravan-bashi" was in high esteem, a person who drove columns of cars to the mainland, and this path passed along the very edge of Ustyurt. But somehow a certain brave man decided to go this route with his wife and little son on his "Zaporozhets" and lost his way. They were searched from helicopters for several days. As a result, only the abandoned "Constipation" was found, and not even bones were found from its crew.

In summer, the thermometer here rolls over 50 degrees in the shade. In winter - cold to minus 50 and above. Yes, all this with a ferocious, in the heat withering, in the cold - a chilling wind. During the year, 100-120 millimeters of precipitation falls on this God-cursed land. Moreover, evaporation is 10-15 times higher than this volume.

Photo by Taimas Nurtaev

Fata Morgana you can touch

And yet there are people who rush to these lands, as if to the promised land. Although such eccentrics are few and far between. Geologists and archaeologists, naturalists and hunters, artists and masters of photography. And also - amateur ufologists. Here you can see, meet, feel something that is no longer in the whole world.

The richest deposits of fossils containing almost the entire periodic table. The oldest on the territory of Kazakhstan and the CIS, and if you search well, then, perhaps, all over the world, sites of primitive man, almost imperishable ancient settlements, barrows of Sarmatian and Scythian burials untouched by human hands. Remains of caravanserais of one of the branches of the Great Silk Road, through which giant caravans once passed, made up not even of hundreds, but of thousands of camels. Wells, up to 50 meters deep, manually hammered by kuduksha ancestors in limestone, several pieces at once in one bunch. Uch-kuduk, famous as a hit of the Soviet times, comes from these places. There was a time when a person willingly settled in these very fertile lands then in an ecological sense.

Photo by Andrey Astafiev

And despite the seeming scarcity of the local flora and fauna, you will find dozens of endemics and relics of the most ancient representatives of the flora and fauna listed in the Red Book on Ustyurt. There is a shrub called "soft-fruited" here, which hundreds of thousands of years ago quenched with its berries the thirst of the same relic as it is - the saiga antelope and some Neanderthal man dressed in the skin of a cheetah. The beast, alas, is still in the memory of the current generation, thirty years ago disappeared forever from Ustyurt.

Here you can see the silhouette of a steep-horned mouflon, clearly carved against the background of the blue sky, trampling the spurs of the Ustyurt chinks with its hoof. Here the saker falcon strikes from above, like lightning, a gaping corsac or jerboa. And even skinny, like an Egyptian mummy, to a wolf.

Photo by Andrey Astafiev

And even recently, some several million years ago, vicious sharks raged here. Whose teeth, jaws and even whole skeletons are still found imprinted in the limestone cliffs of the plateau. Well, yes, the Tethys ocean of the times of the ancient Triassic stretched its waters over a gigantic territory, before it crashed into the Mediterranean, Caspian, Black and Aral Seas.

Well, artists and photographers are attracted here by the fabulous veil morgana. Which can not only be sketched, but also photographed. And even touch it with your hands.

When a glance, tired of a monotonous and empty plain, suddenly stumbles upon bizarre castles, palaces or giant, obviously unearthly animals, the first thought is: this is a mirage. But you drive closer and see: no, it does not disappear, but becomes more and more distinct and visible.

Lord, what miracles the sorceress-nature did not heap up on these meager lands. Wind, sun, frost carved such bizarre structures and sculptures from soft limestone that, even touching them, you do not believe that there were no human hands and his genius.

The hunter Viktor Konyashkin from the village of Sai-Utyos at one time aptly dubbed this entire stone architectural and biological exhibition, built by nature, the "workshop of the devil."

Apart from aliens, no miracles

But some people think that the aliens also frolic here. In 1979, ufologist Galdynbeg Satikov saw a Soxor UFO over the dead clay litter. This observation of his is recorded in the relevant annals of world ufology.

And how many such observations have not been recorded by anyone?

In particular, the head of the department of the local museum of ethnography and local history, Lidia Bychkova, saw, according to her, something like a flying saucer about twenty years ago during a hiking trip, which she went to Ustyurt with her eighth-grader son and his school friends.

Photo by Taimas Nurtaev

The best place in the world to land aliens

We were sitting by the fire, - she recalls, - and suddenly we saw how three bright lights, located in a triangle, separated from the crack of the canyon opposite us. They hung in the air for several minutes and with incredible speed, but completely silently flew away towards the center of the plateau.

And the already mentioned hunter Konyashkin, chuckling, says that he saw these “pots” flying over Ustyurt 20 times, as he put it, but only in Soviet times. And he suggests that it was, perhaps, some of the latest military equipment tested in these deserted places by the USSR Ministry of Defense. Although the pathfinder does not exclude the alien origin of these objects.

Photo by Alexander Tonkopryadchenko

True, the above-mentioned archaeologist Andrey Astafiev did not see anything like this in Ustyurt. Although, according to him, it is difficult to find a place more suitable for landing aliens on the whole Earth. But he, and in a big good company, once saw something like a UFO over the city of Novy Uzen (now Zhanaozen). Moreover, this object was visible at the same time from Shevchenko (now Aktau), although the distance between these cities is about 180 kilometers. Then I saw this incomprehensible thing and the author of these lines. And in Ustyurt, specifically on the Buzachi peninsula above the Kalamkas deposit, I once happened to observe dozens of very rare, they say, naturally occurring ball lightning jumping like crazy among field facilities and high-voltage wires during a salt storm.

By the way, about ball lightning. One local researcher, candidate of geological and mineralogical sciences Gennady Tarasenko, developed a whole theory proving that huge accumulations of giant concretions (volcanic formations of spherical shape) scattered throughout Ustyurt are nothing more than filling stations for UFOs. In his opinion, concretions are repositories of ball lightning, created in prehistoric times by the scientific thought of aliens. And alien ships are constantly refueled with gratuitous energy from these very balls.

If you want to live, don't shoot saigas

Someday Ustyurt and Mangyshlak in general will surely become a place of pilgrimage for tourists from all over the world. In the meantime, only a few daredevils go here. And not always such trips end happily. A tragic accident occurred, in particular, in Ustyurt about 20 years ago with the then Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Republic of Kazakhstan Andreas Kerting, who, by the way, was accompanied on the trip by the archaeologist Andrei Astafiev mentioned above. Andreas and his wife, amateur ornithologists, went to the plateau to look at rare birds. By the end of the day we made a halt, cooked a barbecue. And ... while eating, the ambassador choked on a piece of meat. Andrey Astafyev and the jeep driver Igor Kazakov did everything to pump out the German who instantly fell into clinical death, and as a result were able to start his heart and breath. They took him to the nearest hospital, in Novy Uzen. From there, on the same day, he was taken to the best German clinic by a German helicopter. But even after ten years, the doctors could not bring Curting out of the state of the deepest coma. As a result, he was disconnected from the artificial respiration apparatus.

Photo by Andrey Astafiev

Rumor has it that a German guest allowed himself to shoot a saiga not far from the underground mosque of a local saint, the builder of this and a dozen other similar temple structures, Beket-ata, which is cut into one of the plateau chinks. That's what he was punished for. However, the guide and driver refute this version of the event: the guest of the saigas did not shoot.

One way or another, but this accident added another gloomy touch to the mysterious history of Ustyurt.

The fourth day of our journey began at the Zhipek Zholy hotel, where we checked in at three o'clock in the morning and prepared a report on the rally. After sitting at the computer until the morning, we went to the Ustyurt plateau. Due to the terrible off-road, our guide recommended to leave the Suzuki SX4 in Nukus and drive a military Mercedes 290GD, which was "borrowed" from the ranks of the Uzbek military equipment.
During the fourth day, we managed to go to a small market in Kungrad, visited several picturesque places in Ustyurt, looked at an abandoned fishing village, Sudochie Lake, canyons and the Aral Sea itself.

1. During the day we had to overcome about 450 kilometers, of which 150 were of disgusting quality, as a result, it took us about 12 hours to complete the entire route! Before the trip, we bought food at the market in Kungrad.

2. Many residents happily took pictures and posed, but there were also those who started waving their hands at us.

4. We hit the road. After Kungrad, we drove about 10 kilometers along the bottom of the Aral Sea, which left here in the 60s.

5. Then the ascent to the plateau began. Oceanologists were traveling with us in the second car - scientists from the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who are dealing with the problem of the drying up of the Aral Sea and were going to take regular water samples. Among them was Peter Zavyalov, Doctor of Geography, who has been dealing with this disaster for more than 9 years. In stories about the Aral Sea, we used his materials and articles.

6. To date, the Aral Sea continues to dry up. There used to be water at this level...

7. The Ustyurt Plateau is located between Mangyshlak and the Kara-Bogaz-Gol Bay in the west, the Aral Sea and the Amudarya Delta in the east. The plateau is a desert with an area of ​​​​about 200,000 km².

8. From the side of the Aral Sea, the plateau is cut by hundreds of dirt roads, which can only be driven by a serious off-road vehicle. There is no connection here, and for the whole day we did not meet anyone. Driving here in one car is extremely dangerous - in the event of a breakdown, there will be no one to wait for help from. There were cases when people died of thirst in summer or froze in winter, the weather on the plateau is windy and peculiar, the temperature in winter can drop to -60 degrees!

9. The drying lake Sudochye and the remains of the abandoned fishing village Urga. It was one of the places of exile for the Old Believers. In the 60s, the village was abandoned due to the onset of the Aral catastrophe, and now a small Russian cemetery, ruins of houses and a small factory are left of it. Now there are trailers of an artel of fishermen who rent part of the lake from the state.

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11. Our transport. This is a three-door Mercedes Gelentvagen, an army version. In 1995, he was “written off” from the army of Uzbekistan as a brand new one, and now he brings the owner $ 200 a day.

12. Christian cemetery.

13. Some inscribed stone on one of the hills near the village.

14. Fishermen's boats.

15. And here are the fishermen themselves, who gave us green tea to drink and treated us with stew.

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20. In the 1940s, the USSR launched an ambitious project to draw water for irrigated agriculture from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers. Very quickly, the economy of the Central Asian republics soared to unprecedented heights. But 20 years later, success turned into an environmental disaster. Today, the amount of water in the Aral Sea is approximately 1/4 of the original volume.

21. According to Peter Zavyalov, now the Western Aral is like a powerful chemical reactor. Under conditions of abnormally high salinity - in some parts of the sea it reaches 200 g / l (for comparison, the salinity of the Dead Sea is about 300 g / l) calcium and magnesium carbonates, gypsum and mirabilite fall to the bottom. Another serious problem is hydrogen sulfide contamination. The hydrogen sulfide zone occupies almost half of the entire Western Aral. Gas fills almost the entire lower water column and lies only 10-20 meters from the surface. The concentration of this poisonous gas in the Aral Sea is 10 times greater than in the Black Sea.

22. When the sea receded, the shores began to dry up and collapse, turning into bizarre canyons.

23. This is a small house that stands alone on the cliff of the plateau, where anyone can stay for the night. Inside there is everything you need: dishes, stove, blankets, Koran, carpets, firewood, tools.

24. This house saved the life of many people.

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26. Salt crystals.

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30. After 450 km we reached the place of spending the night - the shores of the Aral Sea.

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32. Previously, there were Soviet-era barracks here. In the 1980s, the coastal supply base of Vozrozhdeniye Island was located on this site. On this island, the Soviet Union tested bacteriological weapons: the causative agents of anthrax, tularemia, brucellosis, plague, typhoid, smallpox, as well as botulinum toxin were tested here on horses, monkeys, sheep, donkeys and other laboratory animals.

33. Locals talk about the sudden withdrawal of the military from the island of Renaissance. In the mid-80s, something happened there, and one day all the personnel left the base. The sudden exodus was indicated by the fact that a large amount of machinery, equipment and food was thrown. And on the runway (there was an airfield with four 3-kilometer strips in the form of a wind rose) there were a large number of disposable syringes and gas masks. As a consequence, the supply base was also abandoned.

34. The colorful shore of the Aral Sea is beautiful in its own way...

35. We were told that several years ago a famous Moscow photographer

The famous Ustyurt Plateau is located in Central Asia, it occupies a vast territory of almost 200 thousand square meters. m. Moreover, the borders of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and a small section of Turkmenistan pass through it. Actually, the name "Ustyurt" in the Turkic version of the translation sounds like "plateau".

Wonderful natural creation

Scientists-geologists suggest that at least 20 million years have passed since the emergence of the plateau. However, only at the end of the last century, in the 80s, did the scientific world become interested in Ustyurt. An expedition to the Ustyurt Plateau was repeatedly organized. People wanted to collect as much information about this magnificent place as possible.

The neighbors of the giant natural creation are:

• on the western side - the Mangyshlak Peninsula and the Kara-Bogaz-Gol Bay (translated as "Black Mouth");
• in the east - the irretrievably drying up Aral Sea, the Amu Darya.

Bozzhira

The dimensions of the Ustyurt plateau are impressive, in different places its height ranges from 180 to 300 meters. Sometimes you come across steep 350-meter ledges - chinks that rise above the adjacent plain.

The southwestern part of the plateau called Boszhira is considered the highest. It consists of rocky ridges, hills (ridges) with almost even outlines. The area of ​​Boszhira is incredibly beautiful, it can compete with the well-known (USA). The only thing that distinguishes these amazing corners of the planet from each other is the number of tourists. Unfortunately, few of them have heard about the existence of this pearl of Ustyurt. It is worth exploring Kazakhstan on a map of mountain ranges to appreciate the scale of this place.

The distant past plateau

More than 21 million years ago, the plateau was deep under water. In that distant era, there were two huge continents on Earth - Laurasia and Gondwana. They were separated by the Tethys Ocean. The disappearance of the ancient sea, which was an integral part of the ocean, falls on the first half of the Cenozoic. The pace of this process accelerated about 2 million years ago, after the Caspian and Black Seas separated.

In the limestone of Ustyurt, they find what confirms the hypothesis put forward. In addition, there is a huge amount of ferromanganese nodules, which resemble billiard balls in size and shape. Not everyone will guess that the spherical formations scattered over the entire surface of the plateau were formed under sea conditions. The water gradually eroded the dolomite and limestone rocks, but the ferromanganese concretions became stronger, only becoming rounded. I can't believe that the Ustyurt plateau is located in Kazakhstan. The locals are proud of this attraction.

Indescribable beauty

A relief with a flat surface is a desert. In some places, clay prevails in the soil, in others - a clay-stony surface. In addition, there are areas of sand or with small gravel. The desert is replaced by cracks or rocks, consisting mainly of chalk. You involuntarily get the feeling that you are on the surface of a lifeless planet or you are present at the shooting of a Hollywood movie of the same format. The Ustyurt Plateau attracts the attention of many tourists and landscape photographers.

The true beauty of the chalk cliffs is revealed when the sun rises or sets. At these moments, a beautiful sight opens up: the rays give usually reddish hues. At noon they become slightly bluish. If you appreciate natural attractions, then be sure to visit the Ustyurt Plateau (Kazakhstan).

Representatives of flora and fauna inhabiting the plateau

Regarding flora and fauna, it is worth noting the following. There is nothing here that could surprise a tourist. Such representatives of the plant world as wormwood and saxaul dominate. In a more favorable spring period, which does not last long, flowers appear and the picture becomes brighter.

The animal world is more diverse. There are all those species that have adapted to life in the steppes and deserts. Climatic conditions on the plateau favor reptiles, which are represented by lizards, snakes and turtles. Small rodents (jerboa, ground squirrel, marmot, gerbil), hedgehogs and hares settled well. This is despite the fact that each of them is a potential prey for a wolf, fox or caracal. The cheetah, which belongs to rare species, feels good, and therefore is protected by law. The shy saigas are considered the pride of Ustyurt. Unfortunately, their population is in critical condition. Argali are also found among artiodactyls.

On the rocks of the chinka, vultures and eagles froze in majestic poses, proudly watching everything that happens below on the plain. There are birds familiar to Europeans - pigeons and sparrows. The Ustyurt plateau is mostly inhabited by snakes. Therefore, tourists should be careful when walking on rocky terrain.

Another feature of the Ustyurt plateau is a large population of feral horses. Once nomadic Kazakhs were breeding these domestic animals on local farms.

Water and winds

Water on the plateau is considered scarce, since natural reservoirs have long since disappeared. All rivers and lakes have dried up. Dry channels and salt marshes testify to their existence in ancient times. The winds in Ustyurt have complete freedom, because there are no natural barriers in the form of mountains and forests on the plateau.

This affects the state of karst rocks, leads to soil erosion, which, in turn, leads to a gradual change in the boundaries of the Ustyurt plateau itself.

Mysteries around the area

During the Middle Ages, Ustyurt was on the path of caravans that departed from the city of Khorezm, and then moved to settlements on the shores of the Caspian Sea and the lower reaches of the Volga River. In other words, a lot of artifacts remained, confirming that merchants often visited the plateau. These are, for example, the remains of cemeteries and underground temples. Settlements were set up, even cities with visiting yards for and with all the infrastructure. The ruins of one of these cities called Shahr-i-Wazir remained in good condition.

In the late 70s of the last century, an aircraft flying over the plateau took aerial photographs. On the surface of the plateau, mysterious images were revealed, something like arrowheads pointing to the northeast. The triangular figures are quite impressive in size, their sides reach 100 meters in length. Unknown craftsmen used a chipped stone to create giant "arrows" on the ground. Apparently, they have some kind of sacred meaning. Scientists have not yet given a clear and unambiguous answer to this question.

Holes were dug in the ground near every corner. They may have retained water. In addition to these "arrows", other figures were later discovered, in particular, warriors, pyramids and turtles, which were also made of stone. "Arrows" on the plateau can be safely attributed to the same category of mysteries of history as the famous images in

Be sure to visit Ustyurt when you come to Kazakhstan. On the map of the area you can see exactly where this natural attraction is located.