The monograph is devoted to a comparative study of two striking phenomena of decorative and applied art: the Scythian-Siberian animal style of the 1st millennium BC - the beginning of the 1st millennium AD and the art of nomads in Central Asia of the 19th-20th centuries. Are these phenomena genetically related, are zoomorphic images and ornamental motifs of modern times reminiscences of the ancient animal style, despite the fact that they are no less separated one and a half millennia? To solve this problem, the author explores hundreds of works of traditional art of the Mongols, Buryats, Tuvans and Altai. As a result, a fundamentally new hypothesis of the origin of ancient nomadic art is proposed.