In Near East, in the Eurasian plains, various stone monuments are found, especially beginning from the 4th-3rd millennia BC. The stone anthropomorphic steale stand out in this row, which began to spread more actively at the end of the 2nd millennium and at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, which is probably related to the movements of different races. With the materials of the 2nd – 1st millennium BC, Armenia is distinguished by a certain diversity: it can be assumed that one of the

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... stations of that diversity is the Artsakh stelae. The latter are approximately rectangular, flat longitudinal slabs, which are divided into three parts by two wide horizontal grooves, "separating" the three parts of the body: the head, which occupies a little less than one third of the whole monument, the waist and the "below the waist". The bottom of the waist was usually lightly polished. It was designed to be placed in the ground or on a special foundation. The steale are about 30-60 cm wide, up to 2.5 m high, about 20 cm thick. Pictorially, the stelae found at Meshkin Shahr in the Ardabil valley are quite close to the monuments of Artsakh, which date back to end of 2nd millennium and the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. These stelae are chronologically earlier than the Artsakh examples; it is possible that they were the prototype of the latter.