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For the past 5 years, the Northeast Asian History Foundation has researched prehistoric and ancient rock carvings distributed across Central Asia, jointly with the local academic institution and scholars. The geographic area of research extended northward to include the Hakasco-Minusinsk basin and the Republic of Tuva in Southern Siberia, the Govi-Altai and the Uvs aimags in Mongolia, and westward to include southeastern Kazakhstan and central and eastern Kyrgyzstan. The Foundation has continued to publish rock art research papers based on the research results.
The series of rock art surveys and researches had been designed to use the graphic images from the pre-literate times to examine the prehistoric and ancient culture of Central Asia and identify the genealogy of the national culture of Korea. As is well known, Korea has historical continuity that started from Gojoseon and continued to Buyeo and Koguryo, etc. However, there are neither bibliographic sources nor material evidences to support the national identity and cultural foundation.
Worse, the historical and cultural space which played central roles in the formation and development of the national culture of Korea has unfortunately become a northeastern territory of present-day China. As a result, we have been denied free access to the sites of the main players of the prehistoric and ancient culture of this region. Moreover, the academic circles of China explained these sites from a China-centered historical view disguised as the theory of unified multi ethnic state, greatly distorting the cultural history of early Korea.

Tracing Back the Genealogy of the National Culture of Korea within a Wide Cultural Area

Under the circumstances, it was necessary for us to develop more active measures and reasonable logic to basically counter China's Northeast Project or other distortions of history. And as part of efforts to this end, a project was launched to research the origin and the formation process of the national culture of Korea. As is well known, no written sources of the day are available that give objective descriptions of the history of early Korea. Therefore, we thought that the first things to do should be collecting, and analyzing and researching sources that would give us a glimpse into the cultural aspects of the pre-literate age. We also thought it urgent to trace back the genealogy of the national culture of Korea within a wide cultural area.
Accordingly, we defined a wide cultural area encompassing the northern Korean peninsula, Manchuria, southern Siberia, and the Altai Mountains from east to west, and planned to derive common elements from the cultures within the area by period. And then we planned to study them in comparison with the prehistoric and ancient culture of the Korean peninsular, tracing back the origin of our national culture and analyzing how it had changed and differentiated over time. And as the subject of that analytic research, we selected rock art as a prehistoric and ancient visual art form.
The rationale for this choice is as follows. Rock art dates back as early as to the Old Stone Age, when the main cultural players of the day started carving the rocks with their hands. And this continued into the ensuing cultural periods, including the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, and the ancient times. In other words, rock art in each period features unique themes that reflect the society and culture of the day as well as the style that distinguishes the given period from the preceding and the following periods. For this reason, the graphic images featured in rock art allow us to define homogeneous and heterogeneous cultural areas, and identify the genealogy of a specific people and its culture.

Introduction to the Cultural Developments of the Ancient Nomads of Kyrgyzstan

For these undertakings, we have spent the last five years researching the rock art in southern Siberia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgzystan and publishing the results one by one. The most recent publication 『Petroglyphs in Central and Eastern Kyrgyzstan』, co-published with the Museum Research Center at the National University of Kyrgyzstan, is based on the research conducted in 2010 on the rock carvings distributed in Talas, Naryn, and Euisik-Kool among other areas in Kyrgyzstan.
This book has been co-written with our Kyrgyzstan collaborators, including T. Chargnovy, O. Soltobaev, and M. Zholdoshov. To help the readers better understand the ancient culture and the petroglyphs of Kyrgyzstan, the book presented an introduction to the research, the current status of the sites, the geopolitical situation of Kyrgyzstan, the ancient culture of Kyrgyzstan, the research history of petroglyphs in Kyrgyzstan, and the world of petroglyphs in central and eastern Kyrgyzstan before it presented the sites researched in 2010 and the graphic images photographed and recorded in the field.
This book features a total of 8 sites: 3 sites in Talas, including Bolshoi Chatukei, Malui Chatukei, and Kamiridin Valeey, and Kok Sai in Naryn, and Cholpon Ata, Kara Oi, Chong Sar Oi, and Ornok in Euisk-Kool. The joint research group examined the carvings featured on about 1,893 rock surfaces in the 8 sites, identified 3,256 graphic images in the process, and recorded the graphic images carved on about 300 rock surfaces.
This book presents this material in its entirety. It features Kyrgyzstan, the mountainous country of Central Asia known as the Alps of Asia, and the culture of the prehistoric hunters and ancient nomads who started living early on in this country, in the form of petroglyphs. None of them have been properly introduced to Korea before. The book clearly presents everything from their favorite animals for hunting to their hunting methods, their clothes, how to use horse and carriages, man-woman relationships, rituals, bows and arrows, ax-fight scenes, and horseback warriors.

The Genealogy of the Prehistoric Culture of Korea Discovered within the Northern Area of the Hunting Culture

A Warrior with a Bow and a Spear

The petroglyphs and their graphic images introduced in this book are pictographs manually produced by the hunters and nomads who lived in this region. Therefore, each of these images allows us to discuss the times and the peoples that passed through this cultural space, the culture that each of the peoples created, the Utopia that they dreamed of, and their world views. And it also enables us to reconstruct the cutting-edge culture of the day, and the exchanges and struggles among the different peoples.
These graphic image sources allow us to not only understand the world of the prehistoric and ancient culture of Kyrgyzstan but look into its connections with neighboring regions and its regional independence. Furthermore, they also allow us to establish the universality of the visual art of the northern hunters and nomads, the themes that reflect the times and their characteristics, and the cultural area that shares the same quality. Of course, in the process, we can look into the genealogy of the prehistoric and ancient culture of Korea.