A tour guide on her way to work has discovered that a 3,500-year-old burial ground she frequently visited was destroyed by vandals who smashed ancient tombstones and damaged countless artefacts.

Tour guide Marina Karimova arrived at the Valley of The Tombs located in the Kazakh region of Pavlodar with a group of excited tourists only to find the site had been vandalised last weekend (12th June).

Marina told the news site Tengrinews: “We came on an excursion and noticed that the stones were scattered around, everything was torn apart, even though two weeks ago everything was in order.”

She explained that the burial ground dating back to the Bronze Age is in an isolated area so the vandals most likely arrived in 4x4s, destroyed the site and then drove off.

The local authorities are aware of the incident and a team of scientists and researchers are going to visit the site to do what they can to repair the damage.

Timur Smagulov, director of the Margulan Center of the Pavlodar State Pedagogical University, said that simply fixing what has been broken is not enough as this is bound to happen again.

Currently, the site is not protected by a fence or security guards making it extremely vulnerable to vandals and theft.

Timur said: “We have to build a fence around the ancient burial ground, create viewing platforms, and install information boards.”

The first excavation of the ancient tombs was carried out in the 1980s but it wasn’t until 2017 that local authorities granted it an ‘open museum’ status.

Elena Tusheva, a local archaeologist who has been carrying out in-depth research at the site, said: “Ancient artefacts have been found here including jewellery and ceramic vessels with geometric patterns characteristic of the Andronovo cultural and historical community.”

Tengrinews said the police are currently investigating the incident, and vandalising such a site is punishable by between three to seven years in prison under Kazakh law.