12,000 Years of Elk Rock Art Evolution in Mongolia’s Altai Mountains!
A fascinating new study published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal by Dr Esther Jacobson-Tepfer has shed light on a remarkable transformation in prehistoric rock art found in the Altai Mountains of western Mongolia. Over the span of 12,000 years, depictions of elk shifted dramatically, from detailed, realistic portrayals to abstract, wolf-like figures, mirroring profound changes in the region’s environment, culture, and identity.
The Altai region, where Mongolia meets Russia, China, and Kazakhstan, boasts one of the world’s oldest and most continuous rock art traditions. Dating back to the Late Palaeolithic period (around 12,000 years ago), these artworks showcase a deep connection to the natural world.
Photo Credit: Gary Tepfer, in Jacobson-Tepfer, Cambridge Archaeological Journal (2025)
Among the most frequently depicted animals was the Siberian elk (Cervus elaphus sibiricus). Early petroglyphs show them with striking accuracy, drawn in profile, their limbs simplified but their proportions and posture closely observed. Some are even shown alongside now-extinct creatures like mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses, offering a rare glimpse into the prehistoric ecosystem.
As time progressed, particularly into the Bronze Age, the elk's portrayal began to change. No longer just passive figures in natural scenes, elk became part of human narratives, appearing in hunting scenes or interacting with human figures. Their shapes grew more elongated, their antlers more exaggerated, and their features increasingly stylised, sometimes taking on snout- or beak-like appearances. Eventually, these figures barely resembled elk at all.
This stylistic shift likely reflects broader societal changes. As the climate cooled and dried during the Holocene, forests gave way to steppe. Elk habitats shifted westward, and the people, adapting to a more pastoral lifestyle, followed, settling at higher altitudes. Petroglyphs from this later period appear in these elevated locations, tracking the movement of both humans and animals across the landscape.
Only one set of painted elk images is known to survive today, in the remote Khoit Tsenkir Cave in Mongolia’s Khovd Province. Most of the other rock art from the region is carved, as painted works would never have withstood the weather over millennia.
Photo Credit: Gary Tepfer, in Jacobson-Tepfer, Cambridge Archaeological Journal (2025)
By the later Bronze and early Iron Ages, the elk had clearly become more than just an animal. It was now a symbol, perhaps of spiritual belief, clan identity, or social status. Later still, with the rise of mounted horse travel and the emergence of new social hierarchies, elk imagery found its way onto portable items like ornaments and tools, embodying the mobile life of steppe cultures.
Eventually, by the Turkic period, the elk vanished from the visual record altogether.
Dr Jacobson-Tepfer’s decades of fieldwork in the region bring personal insight into these transformations. In 1995, while surveying a site at Tsagaan Salaa IV, she encountered a large glacial boulder bearing a striking, abstract image of an elk, so distorted and otherworldly it stood out from the hundreds of carvings surrounding it. For her, the image encapsulated a powerful blend of deep time, symbolic evolution, and shifting cultural identity.
As the rock art shows us, the elk’s journey through time wasn't just one of artistic style, it was one of meaning, memory, and survival. What began as a lifelike animal in a living world gradually became a cultural echo of a vanished environment.