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Ustyurt near the Aral 5 letters crossword. Ustyurt plateau: nuclear test site and paradise for ufologists

An attraction that has been so little explored, and therefore remains one of the most mysterious on the territory of Uzbekistan, is a plateau called Ustyurt. You can also meet another name - the island. It becomes clear why it is called so, as soon as this amazingly large-scale spectacle appears. Huge stone walls, about 300 meters high, rise above the sandy desert. The rocks are a continuous plumb line, in order to climb to the top you need to find a suitable place, and this is not so easy. Suitable places for this are only a couple of hundreds of kilometers away.

Admittedly, the sight of a soaring stone wall can evoke a sense of ecstatic horror. The color range of the stone is striking - from pure white to shades of pink and blue. This creates an atmosphere of fairytale. But once at the top, you immediately understand that this is not a fantasy world, where amazing fairy-tale unicorns graze on silky grass and fairies fly. The landscape that opens up to the eye is more like a scene from a movie about traveling through desert distant planets. The entire surface is covered with cracks and faults.

It is striking that, despite the huge size of the plateau, which is 200 thousand square kilometers, there is not a single reservoir or other source of water on its surface. The only way is to get water from a well, the depth of which must be at least 50 meters. And then, the taste of water leaves much to be desired, it is bitter - salty. Because of this, the flora on Ustyurt is not very rich, basically here you can see only wormwood and saltwort, but they also do not look like lush greenery. But this did not affect the habitation of this place by people at all. The study of this place showed that in the Neolithic era there were about 60 sites of ancient people. Later, the Scythians lived on the plateau, and the Mongols left their traces. Caravans heading from Asia to Europe passed through Ustyurt. Unfortunately, time mercilessly destroys evidence of past life, and only a few dilapidated ancient monuments remain. This is the arch of the Beliuli caravanserai, which has practically disappeared from the face of the earth, the ruins of an ancient fortress and several other buildings.

Archaeological excavations in Ustyurt began relatively recently, in 1983. The delay in research was due to the difficulty of delivering the group and equipment to the site, as well as difficult weather conditions. The first find on the plateau was the Baite cult complexes, which include ancient burial mounds and sacrificial tables surrounded by stone sculptures. Similar ensembles have not been found in Asia. Another interesting detail is that it was not common for nomads to erect such complexes. Who and why built this place is still unknown.

But there is something on the plateau that is considered a mystery of a planetary scale. In 1986, when scientists flew over the area in a helicopter, they were surprised to find drawings on the surface. In appearance, it was something similar to arrowheads, which is why the name “arrows” was assigned to them. Being on a plateau, the drawings cannot be seen; this can only be done from a great height. A similar find, which stirred up the minds of scientists, was discovered in Peru in the Nazca desert. Absolutely all images of arrows are turned with tips to the north, and their length is up to a kilometer. The arrows are made of stone, having a height of about a meter. What these obscure stone buildings were built for remains a real mystery, as well as similar lines in Peru. The researchers gave several guesses about the purpose of the buildings, among them a corral for livestock, and special buildings for irrigating the soil.

Some experts tend to believe that the unsolved mystery of the appearance of cult complexes is associated with unknown "arrows", and that all this has a mystical origin. No one will directly say that this is so, but the fact that inexplicable incidents periodically occur on the plateau is a fact. Locals tell legends about a mysterious glow in the sky and clear mirages that appear both at night and in broad daylight. Sometimes tourists become eyewitnesses of incidents. A certain group of travelers specially comes to these places to catch the opportunity to see the mysterious with their own eyes. But mostly people go to this natural giant to appreciate its grandeur and amazing landscapes.

The geological age of the Ustyurt Plateau is approximately 21-23 million years. Serious scientific study of it began only with the onset of the 1980s.
Usually the territory of the Ustyurt plateau is defined as follows: between the peninsula (Mangistau) and the bay in the west, the Aral Sea and the delta in the east. Geographically, it is attributed mainly to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Other scientists believe that this is an incorrect definition: in a small part of the plateau, it also refers to Turkmenistan. There are two reasons for this disagreement. First, its lack of knowledge. Secondly, one part of the scientists considers the plateau only a table, that is, an elevated part of it, limited by cliffs - cliffs from 150 to 400 m high, while others reasonably object to this: behind the cliffs, the geological structure of the territories adjacent along the perimeter is exactly the same, as on a table plateau; so can they be considered not related to Ustyurt? Logically, no. Hence the different figures in determining the area of ​​​​the plateau - from 180,000 to 200,000 km 2, and perhaps it is even more if the former water area is included in it. Cartographic surveys alone are not enough here; it is necessary to take into account many physical and geographical characteristics that are not always found on the soil surface. With the origin of the name, on the contrary, everything is very clear: the Turkic word "usturt" means "plateau".
The most common physical characteristic of Ustyurt is a clayey and clayey-stony desert with groups of remnants or isolated low calcareous karst formations, as well as shallow cracks in the soil, grabens, local areas of fine gravel and - separately - sand. In scientific language, this is formulated as follows: the Ustyurt plateau is composed of sedimentary rocks of the Neogene, from the surface - Sarmatian limestones, under which marls, clays, limestones, sandstones, gypsum occur. Geologists subdivide the plateau into such large structural and relief components: the North Ustyurt syneclise (large, smooth depression), the Central Ustyurt uplift, the South Mangistau-Ustyurt depression (trough system), the Kuanysh-Koskalin swell, part of the Aral system, which includes also located to the east of the Sudochy trough and the Takhtakair swell. In tectonic terms, Ustyurt is part of the Turan, or Scytho-Turan, plate. At the beginning and middle of the Cenozoic era, the plateau was the bottom of the ancient Tethys ocean, which existed between the ancient supercontinents Gondwana and Laurasia, two parts of the protocontinent Pangea that broke up in the Mesozoic era. The limestones of Ustyurt have many inclusions of shells, and some of their layers are real, and continuous, shell rock. Other witnesses of ancient geological processes are the so-called stone balls, most often partially destroyed, similar to bitten apples, iron-manganese spherical nodules, usually formed on the seabed, at great depths.
The flora and fauna of the Ustyurt Plateau has species typical of other similar regions of the Earth. Herbs are mainly various types of wormwood, but most of all there are semi-shrubs, saxauls are quite common. However, in the spring, in a very short period (and not every year), if you are lucky, you can see the blooming Ustyurt. Among mammals, rodents predominate, mostly small ones - gerbils, ground squirrels, jerboas, marmots. There are several types of snakes, lizards, Central Asian tortoise. Argali, wolves, foxes, corsacs, tolai hares, hedgehogs are found, jackals sometimes penetrate from the south. Two also rare and protected species of cats live on the plateau - cheetahs and caracals. The main beauty of the Ustyurt fauna is saigas, whose population is now under threat. The "kings" of the feathered world are vultures and eagles, there are few other bird species, mainly different types of sparrows and pigeons.
Even on the map, you can imagine what the living conditions are like on the Ustyurt Plateau: there are no rivers and other water bodies, only dried-up channels remain from the rivers, salt marshes from ancient lakes, this territory, not protected by either mountains or forests, is open to winds from all over the world . Creating a plateau, nature seems to have cut it into an almost continuous winding strip of chinks (vertical calcareous cliffs), with a height (in different areas) from 150 to 400 m. The chinks are especially well expressed in the east and west of the plateau. In the north - weaker, in the south there are almost no chinks. As a result of soil erosion and changes in the karst, these guardians of Ustyurt are slowly but surely “moving”, and the boundaries of the plateau are changing after them.
The pristine beauty of uninhabited and hard-to-reach territories can only be appreciated by those who work there, or by experienced extreme travelers. From the Ustyurt Plateau, they bring bewitchingly interesting messages.
The first thing that strikes everyone is landscapes of rare beauty, which make a particularly strong impression at sunrise and sunset, when bizarrely shaped chalk formations, dazzling white or slightly bluish under the midday sun, absorb shades flowing into each other like screens. golden, yellow, pink, crimson colors.
The second most important discovery for travelers is that in ancient times these places were not deserted, here in the Middle Ages a part of the Great Silk Road passed from Khorezm to the Emba, the Caspian and the lower reaches of the Volga. An impressive number of abandoned cemeteries, which are identified by the mazars towering above them - tombstones, and underground temples testify not only to the fact that the caravaners experienced serious hardships on the way, but also to the fact that many, many of these people passed here, and therefore, those who served merchants also lived permanently on the plateau, in small towns with caravanserais, mosques and camel pens. Of the ruins of such cities, the relatively well-preserved remains of the ancient Shahr-i-Wazir are best known. Already open, though not yet explored, traces of other cities. Much of these ruins, in particular the abundance of abandoned wells, indicates that the conditions of life on the Ustyurt Plateau in ancient times were not as harsh as they are now. As for even more immemorial times, archaeologists have discovered more than 60 Neolithic sites and the remains of settlements of the Scythian-Sarmatians of the III-IV centuries. Then, as we remember, there was the era of the Great Migration of Nations (IV-VII centuries), and it also left its material traces on the Ustyurt plateau. It was not only time that destroyed the medieval cities, the Mongol hordes passed here, which is also evidenced by archaeological finds.
And the most amazing and mysterious find on the Ustyurt plateau is its "arrows", which many people compare with the famous images on the surface of the earth in the Nazca desert. “Arrows” in this case is not a metaphor, these giant signs in the form of triangles with sides of about 100 m, laid out of chipped stones on the ground, really resemble arrowheads. They can only be seen in their entirety from the air, which is why they were discovered recently, during aerial photography in the late 1970s. Perhaps the “arrows” also had some kind of sacred meaning, but most researchers are inclined to think that, first of all, they have a practical meaning: they all point with their tip to the northeast, that is, where one could find a retreating from the plateau water. But why are they so big? Maybe this is a message to the higher heavenly powers? So far there is no answer. There are two more interesting hypotheses. According to one of them, these are ancient waterworks: along their perimeter there are ditches, and the grass there is a little greener than around, and at the ends of the sides of the triangles there are pits that supposedly served as reservoirs for water. According to another hypothesis, the "arrows" are cattle pens, and they date back to the 14th-12th centuries. BC e., like the bronze arrowheads found nearby, but these finds are only evidence that nomads were here at that time. There are also conditional figures of turtles and pyramids laid out of stones. In 1983, 70 stone figures of warriors from one to almost four meters high and heads carved from limestone were found near the Beite wells. Judging by some of the depicted details - weapons, decorations - these statues were created by the Scythians-Massagets in the 4th-3rd centuries. BC e. They were knocked to the ground and crushed. Despite this, it was possible to establish that the statues once stood in formation.
Scientists are sure that Ustyurt can present many more similar discoveries.

general information

Desert plateau in Central Asia.

State affiliation: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan.

The largest cities and towns near the perimeter of the plateau: Kazakhstan - Aktobe, Aktau, Atyrau, Kulsary, Kulandy, Bozoy; Uzbekistan - Muynak, Kungrad, Nukus.

Languages: Kazakh, Uzbek, Turkmen, Karakalpak.

Ethnic composition: Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Karakalpaks, Turkmens and others.

Religion: Islam.

Monetary units: tenge (Kazakhstan), sum (Uzbekistan), manat (Turkmenistan).

Major airport: Aktau (international).

Numbers

Area: about 200,000 km2.

Population: the plateau itself as a whole is about 10,000 people. plus those people who work on a rotational basis at drilling, relay stations of the railway and maintain gas pipelines.

Population density: 0.05 people / km 2.

highest point: about 400 m.
lowest point: 52 m.

Climate and weather

Mixed, desert and sharply continental, severe.
January average temperature: -2.5 - -5°C, but sharp drops in temperature are possible in places with low relief up to -40°C.

July average temperature: +26 - +28°С, but sharp rises in temperature up to +40 - +60°С are possible, especially on the soil surface.

(IV-III centuries BC).
Depression Karynzharyk(5 remnant mountains), in the Boszhira tract (a ridge of remnant mountains).
Underground mosque Beket-Ata(near the village of Oglandy).
Mount Sherkala(near the village of Shetpe).
Fields of globular nodules.
"Valley of Castles" Airakty- residual mountains.
Underground mausoleum of Shopan-Ata(near the village of Senek).
Underground mausoleum of Sultan-Epe.
Tuzbair Plateau(chink).
Blue Bay of the Caspian Sea(Peninsula Mangistau).
■ (Kazakhstan): Kederlisor depression, Samal and Sazanbay gorges, Khanga-baba tract, Khanga-baba necropolis with a mosque; other ancient

Curious facts

■ Over the past 20 years, such a previously traditional type of animal husbandry in South Kazakhstan as horse breeding has fallen into decay. And now the feral descendants of those horses that once grazed in herds obedient to man, who have moved here, rush around the expanses of Ustyurt. The wild horses on the plateau are doing well; despite the fact that the vegetation here is sparse, they actively breed and, obviously, are accustomed to do without water for a long time, although water can be found in the lowlands, albeit brackish.

■ In 2010, a comprehensive expedition of the Russian Geographical Society (RGS), based primarily on geomorphological and geophysical theories and various studies applied to these theories, carried out directly "in the field", came to the following conclusion - the border between Europe and Asia in Central Asia should be adjusted (until now it has been customary to carry out along the Ural River and further along the Emba River to the Caspian Sea). Scientists of the Russian Geographical Society believe that the border in this region should be drawn to the south - along the Mugodzhary (this is the southern spur of the Ural Mountains in Western Kazakhstan), along the edge of the Caspian lowland, where the East European Plain ends and the western chinks of the Ustyurt plateau pass. However, the International Geographical Union has not yet expressed an unambiguous opinion about this innovation of our geographers.

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 Beyneu was streaked with strange drawings, visible only from the air, which were very similar to 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 probably once 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 outer side blocked the runoff of water from the entire inner territory and directed it to the arrow-shaped triangles-reservoirs located below. 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 section is dedicated to the most amazing place on the planet - the Ustyurt Plateau. It is probably less studied than the floodplain of the Amazon or Antarctica. For many centuries, Ustyurt has been a crossroads of civilizations, retaining traces of the Scythians, Mongols and more ancient peoples. Along its desert roads lay the paths of great migrations. Since the real development of the plateau by man is just beginning, it can be considered a kind of historical reserve (sorry, not ecological).

The sights of Ustyurt are archaeological monuments. In ancient times, ancient caravan routes passed through the plateau, such as the road of the Khorezm Shahs, which connected Khiva with the lower reaches of the Emba and the Volga. Along it were the ancient city of Shahr-i-Wazir, the caravanserai of Beleuli and the fortress of Allan. Ancient cemeteries with majestic mausoleums-mazars are scattered all over the plateau. Some of them have already been studied by archaeologists, but many are still waiting for their researchers. There are also older monuments. About 60 Neolithic sites are known in Ustyurt.


NATURE OF USTYURT.

The nature of Ustyurt is peculiar and unique. You will not find such landscapes anywhere else, what are the chinks worth (sheer walls of the plateau up to 400 meters high). For example, its eastern part from the side of Kungrad and the Aral Sea can be reached by car only in two or three places for hundreds of kilometers. Academician L. S. Berg (1952) attributed the Ustyurt plateau to the subzone of the northern Tertiary plateaus of the desert zone of the Turan lowland. Most of this plateau is covered with vegetation, transitional from the subzone of the northern (sagebrush-saltwort) deserts to the subzone of the southern (ephemeral-sagebrush) deserts. In physical and geographical terms, Ustyurt is an independent district of the Mangyshlak-Ustyurt province of the northern desert subzone.

Aeolian landforms, clayey flat spaces, vast dry depressions, dry channels of ancient and modern temporary watercourses are widespread here. On the surface, in depressions, Quaternary deposits are widely developed, and on the plateau - Tertiary and Cretaceous deposits, mainly marine. Cretaceous deposits are exposed in outcrops - cliffs of chinks. Chinks reach a height of several hundred meters. Their colors are amazingly festive - from pale pink and blue to dazzling white.


can be seen on the pages of the photo album

Summer is hot and long. The average July temperature is 26-28°. In some years the temperature reaches 40-60°. The average annual precipitation does not exceed 120 mm, they fall mainly in the autumn-winter period.

Autumn is warm and clear. In some years, frosts are formed, alternating with thaws. Winter is short and warm. The cold period of the year is characterized by the intrusion of air masses from the western spur of the Siberian anticyclone. The average January temperature is -2.5-5°. The snow cover is very unstable, it forms in late December - early January. Little snow falls, in 50% of winters it is absent altogether. The air temperature in winter is also unstable. On some days of severe winters, it drops to -26° and even -41°, and in places with low relief to -45°. Frequent blizzards, ice. The average number of days with thaws is 40-45. In winter, strong winds and storms are also characteristic.

Spring is fast, fleeting. Frosts stop in early April. Hot dry weather sets in in the second half of May. Moisture reserves in the soil fall sharply, and grassy vegetation begins to burn out. There are no permanent streams. The available temporary rivers are classified as snow rivers by the type of food.

The soils are gray-brown, solonetzic, with interlayers of gypsum. Soil-forming rocks are Sarmatian limestones. The soil surface is takyr-like, fissured, hard.

Hilly-ridged sands are fixed or semi-fixed by various psammophytes and saxaul. Various halophytes are common on solonchaks. The surface of Kenderlisor, formed in conditions of close occurrence of groundwater, is a salty silty mud with a constantly melting surface. The bottoms of concave depressions serve as a place of accumulation of a large amount of chlorides and sulfites up to 10 m thick. At a depth of 0.3-0.7 m, bitter-salty groundwater ("brines") occurs.

The flora and fauna of Ustyurt was not specially protected by anyone, it was rapaciously destroyed. Many species of animals and plants are listed in the Red Books. The most beautiful animal, the saiga, also suffered from the construction of the century - the Kungrad-Beineu railway line, which cut off the paths of its migrations and was shot from helicopters of the "almighty" Ministry of Gas Industry and the Ministry of Defense.

more details in the section


RESOURCES OF USTYURT.

Natural resources, especially oil and gas reserves, are huge and not fully explored, and what is found is mothballed. The total area of ​​Ustyurt is 180 thousand square kilometers, including 110 thousand square kilometers or more than 60% on the territory of Uzbekistan. The Ustyurt oil and gas region is the largest in Uzbekistan and the least explored. As a result of oil and gas prospecting, about 25 oil and gas fields have been discovered here. Sites have already been allocated for work by the Lukoil, Itera, and Trinity Energy companies.

The Ustyurt oil and gas region is the largest in Uzbekistan and the least studied. Relatively well-studied zones are characterized by indicators of drilling of the territory from 20 (Kuanysh-Koskaly swell) to 25 m per sq. km (Shakhpakhta step), the rest of the territory is less than 3 m per sq. km. km, while in other regions of the world with large oil and gas deposits, this figure reaches more than 100 m per sq. km.

A separate topic is the ecology of Ustyurt and the Aral Sea region. The influence of the Aral Sea is undoubted, but no one knows what the workers of the biological (Vozrozhdeniye Island) and chemical (Zhaslyk village) polygons of the USSR Ministry of Defense buried there. In 1992, they presented an eerie spectacle. Apartments with broken windows and doors, dishes on the tables. Even new equipment with blown up engines was abandoned on Vozrozhdeniye Island, since by that time the level of the Aral Sea had dropped so much that barges from Aralsk could not approach the island.

more details in the section

The huge development potential of Ustyurt has not yet been used, although the problems of the entire Aral Sea region can be solved if they are used rationally.

The Ustyurt Plateau is located in the west of Central Asia, simultaneously in three countries: Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. You can also meet another name - the island of Ustyurt. It becomes clear why it is called so, as soon as this amazingly large-scale spectacle appears. Huge stone walls, about 300 meters high, rise above the sandy desert. The rocks are a continuous plumb line, in order to climb to the top you need to find a suitable place, and this is not so easy. Suitable places for this are only a couple of hundreds of kilometers away.

Admittedly, the sight of a soaring stone wall can evoke a sense of ecstatic horror. The color range of the stone is striking - from pure white to shades of pink and blue. This creates an atmosphere of fairytale. But once at the top, you immediately understand that this is not a fantasy world, where amazing fairy-tale unicorns graze on silky grass and fairies fly. The landscape that opens up to the eye is more like a scene from a movie about traveling through desert distant planets. The entire surface is covered with cracks and faults.

It is striking that, despite the huge size of the plateau, which is 200 thousand square kilometers, there is not a single reservoir or other source of water on its surface. The only way is to get water from a well, the depth of which must be at least 50 meters. And then, the taste of water leaves much to be desired, it is bitter - salty. Because of this, the flora on Ustyurt is not very rich, basically here you can see only wormwood and saltwort, but they also do not look like lush greenery. But this did not affect the habitation of this place by people at all. The study of this place showed that in the Neolithic era there were about 60 sites of ancient people. Later, the Scythians lived on the plateau, and the Mongols left their traces. Caravans heading from Asia to Europe passed through Ustyurt. Unfortunately, time mercilessly destroys evidence of past life, and only a few dilapidated ancient monuments remain. This is the arch of the Beliuli caravanserai, which has practically disappeared from the face of the earth, the ruins of an ancient fortress and several other buildings.

Archaeological excavations in Ustyurt began relatively recently, in 1983. The delay in research was due to the difficulty of delivering the group and equipment to the site, as well as difficult weather conditions. The first find on the plateau was the Baite cult complexes, which include ancient burial mounds and sacrificial tables surrounded by stone sculptures. Similar ensembles have not been found in Asia. Another interesting detail is that it was not common for nomads to erect such complexes. Who and why built this place is still unknown.

But there is something on the plateau that is considered a mystery of a planetary scale. In 1986, when scientists flew over the area in a helicopter, they were surprised to find drawings on the surface. In appearance, it was something similar to arrowheads, which is why the name “arrows” was assigned to them. Being on a plateau, the drawings cannot be seen; this can only be done from a great height. A similar find, which stirred up the minds of scientists, was discovered in Peru in the Nazca desert. Absolutely all images of arrows are turned with tips to the north, and their length is up to a kilometer. The arrows are made of stone, having a height of about a meter. What these obscure stone buildings were built for remains a real mystery, as well as similar lines in Peru. The researchers gave several guesses about the purpose of the buildings, among them a corral for livestock, and special buildings for irrigating the soil.

Some experts tend to believe that the unsolved mystery of the appearance of cult complexes is associated with unknown "arrows", and that all this has a mystical origin. No one will directly say that this is so, but the fact that inexplicable incidents periodically occur on the plateau is a fact. Locals tell legends about a mysterious glow in the sky and clear mirages that appear both at night and in broad daylight. Sometimes tourists become eyewitnesses of incidents. A certain group of travelers specially comes to these places to catch the opportunity to see the mysterious with their own eyes. But mostly people go to this natural giant to appreciate its grandeur and amazing landscapes.