Fine Arts—Central Asia
The art of Central Asia has always been the consequence of the contacts of local cultures with neighboring great civilizations. Being at the crossroads of the Persian, Hellenic, Indian, Arabic, Mongol, and Turkic worlds and later influenced by European culture, Central Asia was a melting pot of aesthetic systems, producing local schools that are interesting for more than their own aesthetic discoveries. The interaction of Hellenistic and Buddhist or Persian and Turkic elements, and the later meeting of West and East, brought about unprecedented intercultural penetration.
Prehistory to Middle Ages
The first artifacts known from Central Asia are rock paintings (showing the hunting scenes and magic symbols characteristic of prehistoric cultures) such as those of Zaraut-Sai, Uzbekistan, dating from the Mesolithic period (eleventh–sixth millennia BCE). The Neolithic period and the early Bronze Age (sixth–third millennia BCE) are represented by ornamental paintings preserved in the ruins at Iassydepe, Anau, in Turkmenistan. During the Bronze Age, when two types of civilization (sedentary-agricultural and nomadic-stockbreeding) existed in the region, two trends of artistic metal treatment were defined. The first, connected with early town culture, presented figures of oriental mythology in a local style. The second, the so-called animal style involving the symbolic depiction of animals, originated with the Sako-Scythian nomadic tribes of northern Central Asia.
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