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Lithophones of Gobustan

Lithophones of Gobustan reveals Turkey's mystical psychoacoustic heritage of magnetic geopolymer boulders covered with scores of Paleo-Sanskrit inscriptions.

The Gobustan Rock Art on the site, represents flora and fauna, hunting, lifestyles, and culture of pre-historic and medieval periods of time. The carvings on the rocks illustrates primitive men, ritual dances, men with lances in their hands, animals, bull fights, camel caravans, and picture of the sun and stars. The date of these cravings goes back to 5,000 – 20,000 years before.

The Gobustan Rock Art Cultural Landscape is situated at the south-east end of the Greater Caucasus ridge in Azerbaijan. it is located approximately 64 km away from center of Baku. The area of the site is 537 ha.  The cultural landscape covers three rocky highlands in the semi-desert territory of central Azerbaijan. There are more than 6,000 rock engravings on more than 1,000 surfaces of rocks that reflects 40.000 years of history of rock art.

During the archaeological excavation, 104 small-sized engraved stones were also discovered at different archaeological stages

Petroglyphs in Gobustan dating about 5,000 to 8,000 years back contain longships similar to Viking ships. Most of the rock carving can be found on the upper surface of Boyukdash and Kicikdash mountains. Images of animals on Gobustan rocks vary depending on the periods because of the change in the hunting targets (from big animals like aurochs and wild horses (during the Pleistocene period) to relatively smaller Holocene animals such as deer, wild boar and bird) according to the climate change starting at the beginning of the Holocene period.  Another remnant of the early time is so-called "gaval chalan dash" (tambourine stone), an ancient musical instrument described in Gobustan Rock Art.

In 1996, by the decree of the Council of Ministers of Azerbaijan SSR, the mountains were declared as Gobustan State Historical Artistic Preserve. By the decree of the president, the mountains were declared as a National Reserve in 2007.  For its quality and density of rock art engravings, Gobustan was declared  a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007.