Painted drawings on a rock at Zhaxi island,Namco Lake,northern Tibet  

DISTRIBUTION.

Incomplete statistics show there are more than 5,000 rock paintings at some 60 sites in 14 counties in Tibet. They are mostly distributed in western and northern Tibet and the plateau area on the middle and upper reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River, which is what we call the Changtang (meaning grasslands in Tibetan). Changtang covers an area 2,400 km long and 700 km wide, with an elevation averaging over 4,500 meters. Rock paintings are concentrated mainly in Ngari and Nagqu. Rock paintings in the western part were carved into rocks, and a small number of these are painted in red. They are distributed mainly in Ritog County, with major sites remaining along the Tibet-Xinjiang Highway. In ancient times, this part of the world was a major passageway to Kashmir, Central Asia and the Western Regions.