In the middle of the 10th millennium B.C. the progress visibly speeded up.

The most significant development of this epoch is invention of a bow and arrows.

The creation of new hunting tools became possible only because the technology of stone tools producing achieved unprecedented before perfection.

At the New Stone Age (the Neolithic) man became immeasurably more powerful than his ancestor. A bow and arrows “lengthened man’s hand”, so he could hunt without approaching a beast too close.

New methods of work with stone were the following: pressure flaking, and later — grinding, drilling, which step by step led to greater specialization in production of unknown before tools such as grinders, mortars, axes and mattocks.

Unlike the previous Paleolithic times the monuments of the Neolithic era are widespread along the whole territory of our republic and the number of discoveries is growing each year. It seems that because of it the history of tribes of the Neolithic period should be understood better.

However, this is not the case. The reason for this inconsistency is that mainly archaeologists investigated the monuments of the Late Neolithic while the transitional period from Paleolithic to Neolithic, the so called Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) which lasted for several thousands of years, still remains poorly understood.

The most significant monuments of the Neolithic period among more than 400 others discovered in Kazakhstan are dune settlements near the station Saksaulskaya (Northern Aral region) and near the resort “Aul” in Semipalatinsk region.

Great sand dunes covered ancient fireplaces and man’s tools very often. And just many years later after the strong winds had dispersed the sand that items again appeared on the ground.

Various stone tools were discovered near the spring settlements Borybas in the Central Kazakhstan, Ushbulak I-III, Karaungur which is to the North-West from Karatau city. The greatest number of the richest material of the Neolithic period was obtained during the excavation of cave site Karaungur, discovered on the right bank of the river of the same name on the south slopes of Karatau range (to the North-East from Chimkent city).

Rich cultural layer near the fireplace and fire stones contained a lot of stone tools and animal bones. Ancient people from Karaungur hunted bear, deer, wild bull, wild boar, argali, hare and badger. At the same time, people ate pheasant and turtle.

It is obvious that the domestication of animals had begun.

Reference:
Agapov P., Kadyrbayev M. (1979) Treasure of ancient Kazakhstan, Alma-Ata: Zhalyn. 252 p. (in Russian)