Touch the ram's horn and. not too long after, a child will be born to you. This is the stuff of legends yet locals, husband and wife, do come here to get the blessings of the spirit of ancient times. The further mankind advances the more interested we become in the history of our ancestors, early man. In hidden places we can find the testimony of times long gone petroglyphs.

Petroglyphs are the most ancient kind of fine arts connected with magic. Primitive hunters, at the same time artists and magicians, painted bulls and even entire scenes of collective hunting on the only canvas available to them rocks. We will never be able to listen to their tales, their very words, but their joys, their fears and preoccupations are revealed through the rock paintings for example found at the site of Obi Rahmat.

As a rule the sites of primitive rock paintings are removed considerably from highways and thoroughfares.

In Uzbekistan the most accessible site for tourists is located near Khodjikent village 70 km North-east of Tashkent, along the way winding towards the Charvak reservoir. The place is called "Chinara". Under the impressive crown of a 400 year old tree, first you'll come across a quaint Chai Khana. Another 30m separate you from the relic of ancient times.

The Obi-Rakhmat grotto is considered one of the most important monuments of early paleolithicum. In 10m of layers upon layers, scientists hove identified 21 different cultures. Close to 30'000 articles from the Stone Age were found here. Cove dwelling, hunting and gathering was the palaeolitic lifestyle.

The Sel-Ungur cave Khaidarkhan village in the Fergana valley dates back 70 thousand-40 thousand years B.C. North of Tashkent in the Karatau mountains another site of the same period with the bones of big mammals elephants, bisons and deers was found. To the later period of early paleolith (100 thousands 35 thousands years B.C.) refers the famous Teshik-Tash cave in Surkhandaria, which in 1938 was discovered by academician Okladnikov and a Neanderthal burial site of a boy of 8-9 years old was unearthed here.

It is important to note that the same type of sites were found in Southern Xinkiang province, in Western Kazakhstan, North- East Europe and South Siberia. Only, these sites appeared 1000 years later and it is thus deducted that in Central Asia the birth of a new culture a new stage of human beings developed, which eventually spread to the North.