In the early to mid–first millennium BCE, ancient horse-riding peoples known as the Siberian Scythians lived in the Altai-Sayan Mountains—a region that spans parts of modern-day Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and China. While studying Scythian art and that of their Siberian predecessors in the 1980s, University of Oregon art historian Esther Jacobson-Tepfer became intrigued by recurring images of the elk (Cervus elaphus sibiricus), she told Popular Science.
But depictions of this majestic animal began long before the Scythians. In a study published earlier this month in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, Jacobson-Tepfer traces elk imagery in western Mongolia’s Altai Mountains from the Late Palaeolithic (around 12,000 years ago) through to the early centuries of the Iron Age in the late first millennium BCE.
Over this time, elk rock art underwent a significant evolution. The earliest images—likely created by pecking into rock with stone tools—are realistic and naturalistic. These static, profile views often depict male and female elk, sometimes with calves, and occasionally alongside other Ice Age fauna such as mammoths, woolly rhinos, and ostriches. As time went on, elk were increasingly shown in motion and in scenes involving human hunters.
By the end of the Bronze Age (ca. 3000 to 800 BCE), elk had become stylized symbols—possibly representing status, clan identity, or gender—and began to take on more abstract forms. The once-lifelike creatures developed elongated bodies, exaggerated antlers, and eventually morphed into fantastical beings with bird-like beaks and wolfish features.
“The physical transformation of the elk into wolf occurred in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages, when the adoption of horseback riding slowly altered the psyche of the people,” Jacobson-Tepfer told Popular Science. “They seem to have come to feel better represented by themes of predation and transformation than by naturalistic elk and other animals.” In her study, she adds that these artistic changes may also reflect broader environmental shifts and the social adaptations that followed.
During the mid-Holocene (ca. 6200–3000 BCE) and late Holocene (after 3000 BCE), the Eurasian steppe grew colder and drier. As forests receded—along with the elk—people in the Altai region began adopting semi-nomadic pastoralism and horseback riding.
“This analysis demonstrates how materials from the expressive record of human culture offer critical insight into how societies evolve psychologically (not just archaeologically) in response to long-term environmental change,” Jacobson-Tepfer concludes.
