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Kazakhstan has a long and fascinating history, going back thousands of years. Some remnants are still visible today such as Great Silk Road monuments, petroglyphs and sometimes even mysterious archaeological sites. The Amazons might have originated from Kazakhstan, the first steppe nomads are supposed to have emerged from here and it is very likely that Genghis Khan was buried in Eastern Kazakhstan. In recent times more and more details about Kazakh history and culture have been re-discovered, making the country also more and more interesting for domestic and international culture seekers.
The territory of Kazakhstan came to be mastered by man nearly a million years ago. As early as the age of the Lower Paleolithic, ancient man settled down on these Karatau lands fit for normal life, rich with game and wild fruit. It is here that they have found ancient settlements from the Stone Age. By and by, in the centuries of the Middle and Upper Paleolithic, man came to master Central and Eastern Kazakhstan and the Mangyshlak area.
1500-year-old city of Turkestan became popular thanks to the sermons of the famous sufisheyha, an outstanding poet and humanist of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi called Hazrat Sultan. In ancient times the city was known as Jassi. Theological School, founded by Yassavi attracted eager knowledge from neighboring cities and remote steppes of Kazakhstan. The city became the most important Enlightenment Center in Kazakhstan. The memorial complex, which appeared on the tomb of the great Yassavi become one of the most visited places in Central Asia. At the end of the XIV century Turkestan acquired a unique facility – a wide complex of buildings around the Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed, built the great Timur. In the Muslim world, the Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed is the second Mecca
The Baykonur Cosmodrom is located amid semi-desert about 250km north-west of Kizyl-Orda. In 1961 this place has once and for all become historical for the whole planet of Earth. It was here where the faith of our civilization was decided and the countdown of new cosmonautic era started. From June 2 to June 4, 2000 the town celebrated its 45th anniversary of Baykonur (former Leninsk). Those originally involved in construction from very beginning could not even imagine that the construction they took part in was aimed to build first ever cosmodrom from where heavy duty human-bearing rockets would be launched in the near future. There was no such word as “cosmodrom” in Russian dictionary at that time and most suitable term for the object of construction was the “experimental range”. On August 21st, 1957 the intercontinental ballistic rocket R-7 was successfully launched. On October 4, 1957 similar rocket had taken the first artificial sputnik of Earth to the orbit
Charynsk canyon, that is compared with its beauty to Grand Canyon in Colorado state, is located 200 km to the east of Almaty. Unique forms of erosion and weathering of the relief will take you to the fabulous, unreal world of fancy sandstone sculptures: “Valley of Castles”, “Witches Gorge” and others.
The height of steep slopes, columns and arches reaches 150-300 meters. The canyon stretches for 154 km from the northeast to the southwest, along the Charyn River, which is perfect for rafting. The rarest representative of the world’s vegetation is preserved here – Sogdian ash, which survived the era of glaciation.