Neolithization Processes in the Northeast Kazakhstan
The article reviews results of the research of Mesolithic and Neolithic in Northeast Kazakhstan. The obtained materials have altered the understanding of the processes, which were taking place in the steppe zone of Eurasia in those periods. They indicate that the process of neolithization had started here well before an established producing economy. It was associated with the arrival of new population with skills of producing economy specialized in pastoral farming. Those most agile groups were in the vanguard of migration processes and transmission of cultural innovations to new territories. A broad dispersal of microlithic technique and forms of mobile art, represented in the most developed images of the cult of fertility - “Venus” and Bull, are well demonstrated with materials from the Shiderty 3 site. However, traces of livestock farming are found only in the Late Neolithic at the Boraly site in the layer of Boborykino culture, which, in the opinion of some researchers, also has a Southwestern origin.