Western Azerbaijan Heritage

Garakilsa dist­rict of Zanga­zur mahal.

Garakilsa district was named Sisian district from 02.03.1940.

Fine art

Armenians are not very interes­ted in going back to the an­cient times, as they know that they have mo­ved to these areas in the last two centuries. Therefore, these monuments ha­ve not been in­vestigated very deeply, and they are not properly protected. Espe­cially, the fact that these petro­glyphs are very similar to the petroglyphs of Gobustan and Altai, and some­times even iden­tical, confirms that they are the cultural heritage of the same ethnic commu­ni­ty.

Garakilsa petroglyphs are divided into two groups. The first belongs to the V-IV millennia BC, the second to the III-II millennia BC. In those images, the animal world of the region at that time (deer, tour, horse, tiger, dog, wolf, bear, etc.), hunting tools of primitive man, etc. has found its reflection.

Like the entire Zangazur mahal, the Ga­rakilsa area has been the homeland of the Turko-Oghuz tribes since ancient times, and the first mass influx of Armenians began here after the occupation of the region by Russia at the beginning of the 19th century.

Petroglyphs are a means that people used to communicate how they saw the world long before writing was invented. An­­cient people tried to draw their images on stones and rocks to convey their excitement and images of the animals they hun­ted to their cavemen. Some­ti­mes they also painted these ima­ges. Rock paintings are a unique source of information about life in the distant past. They attract his­to­rians, archa­eolo­gists, art his­torians, ethno­­grap­hers, lin­guists, folklo­rists, zoologists, as well as re­searchers from other fields of scien­ce. Through these descriptions, the information ob­tained about oc­cu­pation, out­look etc. of an­cient people of­ten helps to learn their future ethnicity.