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The Kyrgyz ritual of monuments predates documented history , many have been found that relate to the Stone Age , and yet one stands alone as being a monument to the dead when it was constructed as a protector of the living .
Eighty kilometres from the capital city of Bishkek lies the remains of the Burana Tower . Once the centre of the city of Balasagun , the tower was constructed in the eleventh century and as legend has it as a protector for the local khan ’ s newborn daughter .
In celebration the khan invited all of the regions wisemen and fortune tellers to the city to discover what lay ahead for his daughter . Foreboding the future , one fortune teller suggested that the daughter would die from a spider bite on her sixteenth birthday , and as such , the khan ordered the tower be built so that she would live at its top and be protected from the world .
Living in exile and confined from the outside world , the daughter spent her days protected from death . Upon reaching her sixteenth birthday a celebration was held and as an offering she was given a basket of fruit . Unbeknown to the daughter , and her father , a poisonous spider
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