In the era of the addition of giant steppe empires, the main character of the rock compositions is a horseman – a standard bearer, an archer or a heavily armed warrior. New pictorial motifs appear: a duel between horse and foot warriors, scenes of a round-up hunt, and migrations. Hunting scenes, traditional for petroglyphs, acquire a different interpretation: if the image of the beast was of paramount importance for the ancient artist, now the emphasis is shifting to the anthropomorphic hero and his military attributes – a battle banner, weapons, horse equipment. In general, along with the pictures of the life of a rich pastoralist society imprinted on the rocks, the theme of the rock art of the Turkic era reflects the flourishing of epic creativity and the assertion of aristocratic military aesthetics.
