Kazakhstan - Turkic sanctuary of Merke

The material and spiritual culture of the Turks is expressed and embodied in the burial and ritual complexes of their sanctuaries. They can be found all over the steppe zones of Eurasia, signing the ways of diffusion and the stages of formation of the Turkic ethnos. At the present most of them are severely damaged by the impact of natural and anthropogenic destructive forces. Only the sanctuary of Merke, located at 3000 m. above the sea level, because of its difficult accessibility, is well preserved. It is represented by small "temples" consisting of barrows, empty funeral fences and anthropomorphic steles (balbal): totally more than 170 monuments have been found until now, distributed on an area of 250 sq km of mountain plateaux, defining a space for burials, worship and ritual ceremonies. About 70 of them have steles, single or in group up to four, set in situ mainly on the tombs, sometimes outside the funeral fences, and only in one case 'buried' inside a fence. The fences define a sacred space and the steles probably represent idolised ancestors.