The Sarmish Gorge is located on the southern slopes of the Karatau mountain range, 30-40 km to the north-east of the city of Navoi (Kermine) in Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....

. The mountain range of the Karatau is considered to be one of the western spurs of the Turkestan

Turkestan

Turkestan, spelled also as Turkistan, literally means "Land of the Turks".The term Turkestan is of Persian origin and has never been in use to denote a single nation. It was first used by Persian geographers to describe the place of Turkish peoples...

 Mountain Ridge of the Western Tien Shan. To the south of the Karatau lies the Zarafshan

Zarafshan

Zarafshan is a city of over 65,000 inhabitants in the center of Uzbekistan's Navoiy Province. Located in the Kyzylkum desert, it receives water from the Amudarya by a 220-km pipeline....

 Valley, bordering the Kyzyl Kum

Kyzyl Kum

The Kyzyl Kum , also called Qyzylqum, is the 11th largest desert in the world. Its name means Red Sand in Turkic languages. It is located in Central Asia in the doab between the rivers Amu Darya and Syr Darya, and is divided between Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan...

 desert. Since ancient times, the Karatau area has been an intersection of seasonal migration routes for people and animals.

Sarmishsay is the largest of many picturesque gorges along the southern slopes of the Karatau range. This place is famous for various ancient monuments of anthropogenic activity concentrated in an area of about 20 km². The sights include flint quarries, mines, old settlements, burial mounds, crypts and petroglyphs, including monuments of the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

, early Iron Age

Iron Age

The Iron Age is the archaeological period generally occurring after the Bronze Age, marked by the prevalent use of iron. The early period of the age is characterized by the widespread use of iron or steel. The adoption of such material coincided with other changes in society, including differing...

, Bronze Age

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...

 and even Stone Age

Stone Age

The Stone Age is a broad prehistoric period, lasting about 2.5 million years , during which humans and their predecessor species in the genus Homo, as well as the earlier partly contemporary genera Australopithecus and Paranthropus, widely used exclusively stone as their hard material in the...

.

There are over 4,000 petroglyph

Petroglyph

Petroglyphs are pictogram and logogram images created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, and abrading. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions of the technique to refer to such images...

s still intact in Sarmishsay. They are mainly located at the beginning of a narrow stone canyon of 2-2.5 km (approx. 1.5 miles) long. The paintings are made on vertical, and sometimes on horizontal outcroppings of reddish sandstone

Sandstone

Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...

 streaked with slate

Slate

Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. The result is a foliated rock in which the foliation may not correspond to the original sedimentary layering...

 and limestone

Limestone

Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....

.

Next to the petroglyphs the burial grounds of ancient nomads and some pagan altars are located. Since ancient times this territory has been a sacred zone, where locals performed their sacred ceremonies on holy days.

The Petroglyphs of Sarmishsay give quite a comprehensivel picture of local fauna thousands of years ago. Today most of the animals they portray, which once inhabited this area, have disappeared, unable to compete for food with man and domestic livestock. Most of animals included in the stone "book" of the Sarmish Gorge now are extinct.