Seven wonders of nature of the Karkaraly Nature Park -
Trip to Karkaralinsky Park from Almaty -
Kalmyk Val is the oldest fortress wall, built by ancient people on the territory of the Karkaraly National Nature Reserve. According to some surviving sources, the width of the wall was 3 meters, the height was over 3 meters and the length was 5 km. The shaft is made of granite stones in the form of an extended chain (wall) that runs along the edge of the city of Karkaralinsk and goes deep into the forest.
How to get there, visit -
Kalmyk Val is located on the territory of the Karkaraly Nature Reserve in the Karaganda region in Kazakhstan.
Information -
The Kalmyk shaft (stone wall) has not been preserved in its original form, practically nothing remains of the wall, all the stone was dragged away for other construction as a good building material. Some of the stones were transported to the city of Karkaralinsk for the construction of the city. According to the researchers, the construction of this stone structure required thousands of tons of stones and thousands of people.
As noted by the Semipalatinsk local historian N. Ya. Konshin, even at the beginning of the XX century, some sections of the wall were clearly visible, especially in the gorges among the hills - the wall stretched like a ribbon, far away, was made of granite, old, weathered, sometimes there were "large hewn slabs, but without inscriptions and images."
Judging by the descriptions of S. B. Broneveky, the author, armed with a measuring tape, taking the Karkaraly Cossack Bubenov as a guide, walked not only along the entire foot of the wall, but also made the necessary measurements. The precious lines of an eyewitness preserved to us the condition and location of the deserted fortification: "At the very Karkaralinskaya order, in a narrow gorge where the Zharymsu river flows, a wall was erected blocking the passage to a vast valley surrounded by very high mountains, along the crests of which, as can be seen, a wall of granite stone was carried out with extraordinary efforts, in some places in seven, in others - five yards high and three yards thick.This fortification extends for several versts in circumference."
If you go to the edge of the forest in the gorge of the Bolshaya Karkaralinka River, you will immediately find traces of the Kalmyk stone shaft: a two-meter strip of broken fine granite crossed the riverbed, shot up to the crest of a rocky ridge and rushed south, repeating all the bends of the treeless ridge, descended from it into the valley of the Suukbulak stream and, climbing another hill, ended as and it began - near the edge of the forest. If you imagine a space enclosed by a shaft, then you get a reliably protected vast field. Yes, tens of thousands of people could freely accommodate on its expanses
While there is no reliable evidence that this archaeological monument is IV - V thousand years old, it is also not clear who created the wall. According to some researchers, it was built by Andronovites - residents of the ancient settlement of Suukbulak. It is believed that the defensive ridge originated in the era of the Tatar-Mongol invasions or even later - during the heyday of the Dzungarian Khanate.
At the end of the last century, the archaeologist V. P. Nikitin recorded an interesting legend in Karkaralinsk, which indicates the name of the architect of the fortress wall - the Karkaralinsky batyr Malai-Sara.
He "chose a valley protected by large, almost sheer mountains for his nomad; but since it was surrounded by mountains only on three sides, on the fourth side, where there were no mountains and where the terrain was open to raids, he built a wall.
Kalmyk shaft (wall) in Karkaralinsk Park, Karaganda region
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