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Very little is known about the worldview traditions of the Begazy-Dandybay communities that inhabited Central Kazakhstan during the Late Bronze Age. The rather monotonous and semantically inexpressive settlement material is uninformative, and large mausoleums and the vast majority of ordinary burials, plundered in ancient times, do not provide any kind of complete picture that would allow for large-scale reconstructions in the spiritual sphere of society. Perhaps the only, but exceptionally striking phenomenon of this period is carved bone, found in large settlements and convincingly demonstrating a relatively high level of development of mythological creativity."Carved bone" is the conventional name for ornamented handicrafts made of bone, elk and deer antlers, apparently widespread in the mountain forest oases of the Bronze Age of Central Kazakhstan. Carved bone items were probably essential components of a ritual performance dedicated to especially revered deities, which was performed at certain culminating moments of the annual cycle, usually associated with the periods of the spring-summer solstice. The perfection of forms, the subtlety of ornamentation, and the relative fragility of highly artistic items exclude their direct utilitarian purpose and, of course, testify to the high ritual significance of objects in the spiritual sphere, as well as to the great aesthetic potential of the steppe population of the Late Bronze Age.
