Cosmogonic motifs of Kazakhs are universal for many peoples of the world. These include:

• “Dongelek” – a solar circle symbolizing the sun,
• “Tort kulak” – a cross – four directions of the world,
• “Shimai” is a spiral symbolizing world space and perpetual motion since the time of the ancient Saks.
• images of the star – “juldyz”,
• crescent – “aishik” and others.

Kazakhs believe that every soul has a star, so when the star is falling it means someone died. When someone sees the falling star they say: my star is higher.

The ancient peoples did not know that the stars are distant suns, but they believed that these small dots affect their lives. According to Turkic legends, when Tengri saw that the vault of heaven had collapsed and crushed the earth, he supported it with his iron staff. At the point where the Tengri put his staff in the sky, there is a star Temir kazyk – this is the name of the Polar Star, a fixed point in the sky, according to which travelers are oriented, it is a space stem, that defines order of Universe. They also believed that unborn souls live on Venus. This planet, Sholpan, was important for nomads also because the shepherds were oriented in time: the star came up – you can drive the herds home, therefore it was called the “shepherd’s star”.

Traditionally, the best ancient astronomers are considered marine peoples, whom swimming in the open sea made them study the night sky to navigate the stars. Coastal coasting has already given the ancient Phoenician seafarers such knowledge that formed the basis of European astronomy. But migrations made by nomads required no less knowledge than sea voyages.

Their travels in duration (in space and time) were many times superior to the sea routes of contemporaries. Passing thousands and thousands of kilometers a year over an ocean of grass in the steppes of Eurasia, they crossed several landscape and climatic zones, when everything changed around – seasons, landscapes, flora and fauna, color of air and taste of water. On the way, children were born and grew up, young men were becoming husbands, old people were passing away… And in this moving world, the only lasting signs by which to check the path were stars; in a world changing around a nomad, only the sky above his head was unchanged – the divine Kok Mengi Tanir – the Blue Eternal Sky

Each nomad family had its own yurt, the dome of which remained open for a certain part of the year, and the poles of the dome were a good reference point for observing at night the movement of the moon, stars and planets. Thus, each yurt was a kind of family“ planetarium ”, thanks to what accumulated and transmitted from generation to generation observations of the luminaries.

Without deep astronomical knowledge, it was impossible to master the very type of economy based on constant movement.

Astronomy was especially necessary for migrations at night, which were made due to heat, waterlessness or for other reasons. “Knowing the position and course of most of the luminaries of the heavens, the Kyrgyz (Kazakh – A.M.) boldly sets out at night along the steppes in which there are no roads, no paths and not only accurately reaches the desired goal, but even determines the hour at every step or the time elapsed from the beginning of the night, and the place where his morning finds. In the same way, looking at the sun, he assigns how long it appeared on the horizon and when it will disappear. According to these remarks, he has his classes, rest, travel, stops, trips, dates. In a word, he looks at the sky, like a European at a pocket watch. ”