Kazakh Turkologist Talgat Moldabay: the history of Turkic writing may reach back 10,000 years, from petroglyphs to the Gokturk script

Associate Professor Talgat Moldabay of the L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University, a specialist in the Gokturk script, gave an interview to the Crimean News Agency (QHA), published on October 31. He says the history of Turkic writing may go back some 10,000 years.

In his account the first stage consists of rock drawings, signs and tamgas found across the steppe. A tamga marked a clan or ownership and was burned or cut into animals' ears. Over time such marks developed into letters. As an example he cites drawings in the Khoit Tsenkher Cave in Mongolia, which he dates to about 10,000 years ago.

Moldabay regards the Gokturk script as indigenous and sees traces of pictographic, ideographic, syllabic and alphabetic stages in it. Chinese sources say the Huns sent messages carved on wood, which he also counts as a form of writing. The Saka silver inscription linked to the Golden Man find in Kazakhstan has been the subject of about 18 decipherment attempts without a definitive result. He says its letter forms resemble Turkic signs by 85 to 97 percent.

He adds that the Gokturk script was later replaced by an alphabet the Uyghurs adapted from Manichaean writing. These are views expressed in an interview, and scholarly debate about the earliest stage of Turkic writing continues.