Ulytau national park

Ulytau National Park occupies the Ulytau mountains near the geographic center of Kazakhstan, a region regarded as one of the historical heartlands of medieval Eurasian steppe culture, where successive Kazakh khans were traditionally enthroned and buried. A nature and history reserve-museum was first established here in 1990, and in 2021 the area was reorganized as a state national nature park covering close to 60,000 hectares of steppe and low mountains with varied flora and fauna. The park protects numerous archaeological sites, including the mausoleum attributed to Jochi Khan, regarded as an ancestor of the Kazakh khans, and the tomb linked to Alasha Khan, remembered in oral tradition as the legendary founder of the Kazakh zhuzes. Other monuments include the Terekty Aulie petroglyph field, Bronze Age copper-smelting sites, Saka-period burial mounds, and stone sculptures and settlement remains left by medieval Turkic, Oghuz, and Kipchak peoples, making Ulytau one of the densest concentrations of steppe heritage sites in the country.