The peoples of siberia briefly. Slavic and other peoples that have inhabited the vast expanses of Siberia since ancient times: attempts at manipulation. Development of socio-economic relations

The average number of peoples is the West Siberian Tatars, Khakass, Altai. The rest of the peoples, due to their small number and similar features of the fishing life, are attributed to the group of “small peoples of the North”. Among them are the Nenets, Evenks, Khanty, notable for the number and preservation of the traditional way of life of the Chukchi, Evens, Nanai, Mansi, Koryaks.

The peoples of Siberia belong to various linguistic families and groups. In terms of the number of speakers of related languages, the peoples of the Altai language family are in first place, at least from the turn of our era, which began to spread from the Sayan-Altai and the Baikal region to the deep regions of Western and Eastern Siberia.

The Altai language family within Siberia is divided into three branches: Turkic, Mongolian and Tungus. The first branch - Turkic - is very extensive. In Siberia, it includes: Altai-Sayan peoples - Altai, Tuvinians, Khakassians, Shors, Chulyms, Karagas, or Tofalars; West Siberian (Tobolsk, Tara, Barabinsk, Tomsk, etc.) Tatars; in the Far North - Yakuts and Dolgans (the latter live in the east of Taimyr, in the basin of the Khatanga river). Only the Buryats, settled in groups in the western and eastern Baikal region, belong to the Mongolian peoples in Siberia.

The Tungus branch of the Altai peoples includes the Evenks (“Tunguses”), who live in scattered groups over a vast territory from the right tributaries of the Upper Ob to the Okhotsk coast and from the Baikal region to the Arctic Ocean; Evens (Lamuts), settled in a number of regions of northern Yakutia, on the Okhotsk coast and Kamchatka; also a number of small nationalities of the Lower Amur - Nanais (Golds), Ulchi, or Olchi, Negidals; The Ussuri region - Orochi and Ude (Udege); Sakhalin - Oroks.

In Western Siberia, ethnic communities of the Uralic language family have been formed since remote times. These were the Ugric-speaking and self-speaking tribes of the forest-steppe and taiga belt from the Urals to the Upper Ob region. Currently, the Ugric peoples - Khanty and Mansi - live in the Ob-Irtysh basin. The Samoyed (self-speaking) ones include the Selkups in the Middle Ob, the Enets in the lower reaches of the Yenisei, the Nganasans, or the Tavgians in the Taimyr, the Nenets inhabiting the forest-tundra and tundra of Eurasia from Taimyr to the White Sea. Once small Samoyed peoples lived in Southern Siberia, in the Altai-Sayan highlands, but their remnants - Karagas, Koibals, Kamasins, etc. - were Turkized in the 18th - 19th centuries.

The indigenous peoples of Eastern Siberia and the Far East are Mongoloid in terms of the main features of their anthropological types. The Mongoloid type of the population of Siberia could genetically originate only in Central Asia. Archaeologists prove that the paleotic culture of Siberia developed in the same direction and in similar forms as the Paleolithic of Mongolia. Based on this, archaeologists believe that it was the Upper Paleolithic era with its highly developed hunting culture that was the most suitable historical time for the widespread settlement of Siberia and the Far East by the "Asian" - Mongoloid appearance - ancient man.

Mongoloid types of ancient “Baikal” origin are well represented among the modern Tungus-speaking population groups from the Yenisei to the Okhotsk coast, as well as among the Kolyma Yukaghirs, whose distant ancestors may have preceded the Evenks and Evens in a significant area of ​​Eastern Siberia.

Among a significant part of the Altai-speaking population of Siberia - Altai, Tuvinians, Yakuts, Buryats, etc. - the most widespread Central Asian type is the Mongoloid Central Asian type, which is a complex racial-genetic formation, the origins of which go back to the early Mongoloid groups that mixed with each other (from ancient times until the late Middle Ages).

Sustainable economic and cultural types of the indigenous peoples of Siberia:

  1. foot hunters and fishermen of the taiga zone;
  2. wild deer hunters in the Subarctic;
  3. sedentary downstream fishermen big rivers(Obi, Amur, and also in Kamchatka);
  4. taiga hunter-reindeer breeders of Eastern Siberia;
  5. tundra reindeer herders from the Northern Urals to Chukotka;
  6. hunters for sea animals on the Pacific coast and islands;
  7. cattle breeders and farmers of Southern and Western Siberia, the Baikal region, etc.

Historical and ethnographic areas:

  1. West Siberian (from the southern, approximately to the latitude of Tobolsk and the mouth of the Chulym on the Upper Ob, and northern, taiga and subarctic regions);
  2. Altai-Sayan (mountain taiga and forest-steppe mixed zone);
  3. East Siberian (with internal differentiation of commercial and agricultural types of tundra, taiga and forest-steppe);
  4. Amur (or Amur-Sakhalin);
  5. northeastern (Chukchi-Kamchatka).

The Altai language family was formed at first among the very mobile steppe population of Central Asia, outside the southern outskirts of Siberia. The division of this community into proto-Türks and proto-Mongols took place on the territory of Mongolia within the 1st millennium BC. Later, the ancient Turks (the ancestors of the Sayan-Altai peoples and Yakuts) and the ancient Mongols (the ancestors of the Buryats and Oirats-Kalmyks) settled in Siberia. The area of ​​origin of the primary Tungus-speaking tribes was also located in Eastern Transbaikalia, from where, at the turn of our era, the movement of foot hunters of the Proto-Evenki began to the north, to the Yenisei-Lena interfluve, and also later to the Lower Amur.

The era of the early metal (2-1 millennia BC) in Siberia is characterized by many streams of southern cultural influences reaching the lower reaches of the Ob and the Yamal Peninsula, to the lower reaches of the Yenisei and Lena, to Kamchatka and the Bering Sea coast of the Chukotka Peninsula. The most significant, accompanied by ethnic inclusions in the aboriginal environment, these phenomena were in southern Siberia, the Amur region and Primorye of the Far East. At the turn of 2-1 millennia BC. there was a penetration into southern Siberia, the Minusinsk depression and the Tomsk Ob region of steppe cattle breeders of Central Asian origin, who left the monuments of the Karasuk-Irmen culture. According to a convincing hypothesis, these were the ancestors of the Kets, who later, under pressure from the early Turks, moved further to the Middle Yenisei, and partially mixed with them. These Turks are carriers of the Tashtyk culture of the 1st century. BC. - 5 c. AD - settled in the Altai-Sayan Mountains, in the Mariinsko-Achinsk and Khakass-Minusinsk forest-steppe. They were engaged in semi-nomadic cattle breeding, knew agriculture, made extensive use of iron tools, built rectangular log dwellings, had draft horses and riding domestic deer. It is possible that it was through them that domestic reindeer husbandry began to spread in Northern Siberia. But the time of the really widespread distribution of the early Turks along the southern strip of Siberia, north of the Sayan-Altai and in the Western Baikal region, is, most likely, the 6th-10th centuries. AD Between X and XIII centuries. the movement of the Baikal Turks to the Upper and Middle Lena begins, which marked the beginning of the formation of an ethnic community of the most northern Turks - the Yakuts and the Dolgans.

The Iron Age, the most developed and expressive in Western and Eastern Siberia, in the Amur region and Primorye in the Far East, was marked by a noticeable rise in productive forces, an increase in population and an increase in the diversity of cultural means not only in the coastal areas of large river communications (Ob, Yenisei, Lena, Amur ), but also in the deep taiga regions. Possession of good means of transport (boats, skis, hand sleds, sled dogs and deer), metal tools and weapons, fishing gear, good clothing and portable shelters, as well as perfect methods of housekeeping and preparing food for future use, i.e. The most important economic and cultural inventions and work experience of many generations allowed a number of aboriginal groups to widely settle in the remote, but rich in animals and fish taiga areas of Northern Siberia, to develop the forest-tundra and reach the coast of the Arctic Ocean.

The largest migrations with widespread development of the taiga and assimilative introduction into the “Paleo-Asian-Yukagir” population of Eastern Siberia were made by the Tungus-speaking groups of foot and reindeer hunters for elk and wild deer. Moving in different directions between the Yenisei and the Okhotsk coast, penetrating from the northern taiga to the Amur and Primorye, entering into contacts and mixing with the foreign-speaking inhabitants of these places, these “Tungus explorers” eventually formed numerous groups of Evenks and Evens and the Amuro-Primorye peoples ... The medieval Tunguses, who themselves took possession of domestic deer, contributed to the spread of these useful transport animals among the Yukaghirs, Koryaks and Chukchi, which had important consequences for the development of their economy, cultural communication and changes in the social order.

Development of socio-economic relations

By the time the Russians arrived in Siberia, the indigenous peoples of not only the forest-steppe zone, but also taiga and tundra, were by no means at that stage of socio-historical development that could be considered deeply primitive. Socio-economic relations in the leading sphere of production of conditions and forms of social life among many peoples of Siberia reached a fairly high stage of development already in the 17th-18th centuries. Ethnographic materials of the 19th century. state the predominance among the peoples of Siberia of the relations of the patriarchal-communal system associated with subsistence farming, the simplest forms of neighborly-related cooperation, the communal tradition of land ownership, the organization of internal affairs and relations with the outside world, with a fairly strict account of "blood" everyday (mainly religious and ceremonial and direct communication) spheres. The main social-production (including all aspects and processes of production and reproduction of human life), a socially significant unit of the social structure of the peoples of Siberia was the territorial-neighboring community, within which they reproduced, passed from generation to generation and accumulated everything necessary for the existence and industrial communication material means and skills, social and ideological relations and properties. As a territorial-economic association, it could be a separate sedentary settlement, a group of interconnected fishing camps, a local community of semi-nomads.

But ethnographers are also right that in the everyday life of the peoples of Siberia, in their genealogical ideas and connections, living remnants of the former relations of the patriarchal-clan system have been preserved for a long time. Among such persistent phenomena should be attributed generic exogamy, spread to a fairly wide range of relatives in several generations. There were many traditions emphasizing the sacredness and inviolability of the generic principle in the social self-determination of the individual, his behavior and attitude towards the people around him. The highest virtue was considered kindred mutual assistance and solidarity, even to the detriment of personal interests and deeds. The focus of this ancestral ideology was the expanding paternal family and its lateral patronymic lines. A wider range of relatives of the paternal “root” or “bone” was also taken into account, if, of course, they were known. Proceeding from this, ethnographers believe that in the history of the peoples of Siberia, the paternal-clan system was an independent, very long stage in the development of primitive communal relations.

Industrial and domestic relations between men and women in the family and the local community were built on the basis of the division of labor by sex and age. The significant role of women in the household was reflected in the ideology of many Siberian peoples in the form of the cult of the mythological “mistress of the hearth” and the associated custom of “keeping fire” by the real mistress of the house.

The Siberian material of the past centuries used by ethnographers, along with archaism, also shows obvious signs of the ancient decline and decay of clan relations. Even in those local societies where social-class stratification had not received any noticeable development, features were found that overcame tribal equality and democracy, namely: individualization of methods of appropriating material goods, private ownership of handicrafts and objects of exchange, property inequality between families. , in some places patriarchal slavery and bondage, the allocation and rise of the ruling clan nobility, etc. These phenomena in one form or another are marked by documents of the 17th-18th centuries. among the Ob Ugrians and Nenets, Sayan-Altai peoples and Evenks.

The Türkic-speaking peoples of Southern Siberia, Buryats and Yakuts at that time were characterized by a specific ulus-tribal organization that combined the orders and customary law of a patriarchal (neighborly-related) community with the dominant institutions of a military hierarchical system and the despotic power of the tribal nobility. The tsarist government could not but reckon with such a difficult socio-political situation, and, recognizing the influence and strength of the local ulus nobility, practically entrusted it with the fiscal and police management of an ordinary mass of accomplices.

It should be borne in mind that Russian tsarism was not limited only to collecting tribute - from the indigenous population of Siberia. If this was the case in the 17th century, then in subsequent centuries the state-feudal system sought to make the most of the productive forces of this population, imposing on it ever greater payments and in-kind duties and depriving it of the right of supreme ownership of all lands, lands and mineral wealth. An integral part of the economic policy of the autocracy in Siberia was the encouragement of the commercial and industrial activities of Russian capitalism and the treasury. During the post-reform period, the flow of agrarian resettlement of peasants from European Russia to Siberia increased. Centers of economically active newcomers began to form quickly along the most important transport routes, which entered into diversified economic and cultural contacts with the indigenous inhabitants of the newly developed areas of Siberia. Naturally, under this generally progressive influence, the peoples of Siberia lost their patriarchal originality (“the originality of backwardness”) and were introduced to new living conditions, although before the revolution this took place in contradictory and painless forms.

Economic and cultural types

Among the indigenous peoples, by the period of the arrival of the Russians, cattle breeding was much more developed than agriculture. But since the 18th century. agriculture occupies everything more space among the West Siberian Tatars, it also spreads among the traditional pastoralists of southern Altai, Tuva and Buryatia. Correspondingly, the material and everyday forms changed: strong settled settlements arose, nomadic yurts and semi-dugouts were replaced by log houses. However, the Altai, Buryats and Yakuts had polygonal log yurts with a conical roof for a long time. outward appearance imitating a felt yurt of nomads.

The traditional clothing of the pastoralist population of Siberia was similar to the Central Asian one (for example, Mongolian) and was of the type of swing (fur and cloth robe). The characteristic clothing of the South Altai cattle breeders was a long-sheepskin coat. Married Altai women (as well as Buryats) wore a kind of long sleeveless jacket with a slit in the front - "chegedek" over a fur coat.

The lower reaches of large rivers, as well as a number of small rivers of North-Eastern Siberia, are characterized by a complex of sedentary fishermen. In the vast taiga zone of Siberia, on the basis of the ancient hunting way, a specialized economic and cultural complex of hunter-reindeer herders was formed, which included the Evenks, Evens, Yukagirs, Oroks, Negidals. The fishery of these peoples consisted in the capture of wild elk and deer, small hoofed and fur-bearing animals. Fishing was almost everywhere an auxiliary occupation. In contrast to the sedentary fishermen, the hunter-reindeer herders of the taiga led a nomadic lifestyle. Taiga transport reindeer herding is exclusively pack-riding.

The material culture of the hunting peoples of the taiga was fully adapted to constant movement. The Evenki are a typical example of this. Their dwelling was a conical tent covered with reindeer skins and tanned leather (“rovduga”), also sewn into wide strips of birch bark boiled in boiling water. With frequent migrations, these tires were transported in packs on domestic reindeer. To move along the rivers, the Evenks used birch-bark boats, so light that one person could easily carry them on their backs. The Evenk skis are excellent: wide, long, but very light, glued with the skin from the leg of an elk. The ancient clothes of the Evenks were adapted to frequent skiing and riding a deer. This garment, made of thin but warm deer skins, was swing-open, with non-converging floors in front, the chest and abdomen were covered with a kind of fur bib.

The general course of the historical process in various regions of Siberia was dramatically changed by the events of the 16th-17th centuries, associated with the appearance of Russian explorers and the inclusion, ultimately, of all Siberia into the Russian state. The lively Russian trade and the progressive influence of the Russian settlers made significant changes in the economy and life of not only the cattle-breeding and agricultural, but also the commercial indigenous population of Siberia. By the end of the 18th century. Evenks, Evens, Yukagirs and other fishing groups of the North began to widely use firearms... This facilitated and quantitatively increased the production of large animals (wild deer, elk) and fur animals, especially squirrels - the main object of the fur trade in the 18th and early 20th centuries. New occupations began to be added to the original trades - more developed reindeer husbandry, the use of the draft power of horses, agricultural experiments, the beginnings of a craft at the local resource base, etc. As a result of all this, the material and everyday culture of the indigenous inhabitants of Siberia also changed.

Spiritual life

The area of ​​religious and mythological ideas and various religious cults was the least susceptible to progressive cultural influence. The most common form of belief among the peoples of Siberia was.

Distinctive feature Shamanism is the belief that certain people - shamans - have the ability, bringing themselves into a frenzied state, to enter into direct communication with the spirits - patrons and assistants of the shaman in the fight against disease, hunger, loss and other misfortunes. The shaman was obliged to take care of the success of the trade, the successful birth of a child, etc. Shamanism had several varieties corresponding to different stages of social development of the Siberian peoples themselves. Among the most backward peoples, for example, among the Itelmens, everyone could shaman, and especially old women. Remnants of such "universal" shamanism were preserved among other peoples.

For some peoples, the functions of a shaman were already a special specialty, but the shamans themselves served the clan cult, in which all adult members of the clan took part. Such "tribal shamanism" was noted among the Yukaghirs, Khanty and Mansi, among the Evenks and Buryats.

Professional shamanism flourishes during the disintegration of the patriarchal clan system. The shaman becomes a special person in the community, opposing himself to uninitiated relatives, living on income from his profession, which becomes hereditary. It is this form of shamanism that has been observed in the recent past among many peoples of Siberia, especially among the Evenks and the Tungus-speaking population of the Amur, among the Nenets, Selkups, and Yakuts.

Among the Buryats, it acquired complicated forms under the influence, and from the end of the 17th century. generally began to be replaced by this religion.

The tsarist government, starting from the 18th century, zealously supported the missionary activity of the Orthodox Church in Siberia, and Christianization was often carried out by coercive measures. TO late XIX v. most of the Siberian peoples were formally baptized, but their own beliefs did not disappear and continued to have a significant impact on the worldview and behavior of the indigenous population.

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Literature

  1. Ethnography: textbook / ed. Yu.V. Bromley, G.E. Markov. - M .: Higher school, 1982. - S. 320. Chapter 10. "Peoples of Siberia".

In the vast expanses of the Siberian tundra and taiga, forest-steppe and black earth expanses, a population settled, hardly more than 200 thousand people by the time of the arrival of the Russians. In the areas of the Amur and Primorye by the middle of the XVI century. inhabited by about 30 thousand people. The ethnic and linguistic composition of the population of Siberia was very diverse. The very difficult living conditions in the tundra and taiga and the exceptional disunity of the population led to an extremely slow development of the productive forces among the peoples of Siberia. Most of them by the time of the arrival of the Russians were still at one stage or another of the patriarchal clan system. Only the Siberian Tatars were at the stage of the formation of feudal relations.
In the economy of the northern peoples of Siberia, the leading place belonged to hunting and fishing. Gathering of wild edible plants played an auxiliary role. Mansi and Khanty, like the Buryats and Kuznetsk Tatars, mined iron. More backward peoples still used stone tools. A large family (yurts) consisted of 2 - 3 men and more. Sometimes several large families lived in numerous yurts. In the North, such yurts were independent settlements - rural communities.
Por. Ostyaks (Khanty) lived in the Ob. Their main occupation was fishing. The fish was eaten, and clothes were made from fish skin. On the wooded slopes of the Urals, the Voguls lived, who were mainly engaged in hunting. The Ostyaks and Voguls had principalities headed by the clan nobility. The princes owned fishing, hunting grounds, and, in addition, their fellow tribesmen brought them "gifts". Wars often broke out between the principalities. Captured prisoners were turned into slaves. The Nenets, who were engaged in reindeer herding, lived in the northern tundra. With herds of deer, they constantly moved from pasture to pasture. Reindeer provided the Nenets with food, clothing and housing, which was made of reindeer skins. Fishing and hunting for Arctic foxes and wild deer were common activities. The Nenets lived in families led by princes. Further, to the east of the Yenisei, the Evenks (Tungus) lived. Their main occupation was hunting for fur-bearing animals, as well as fishing. In search of prey, the Evenks moved from place to place. The clan system also prevailed among them. In the south of Siberia, in the upper reaches of the Yenisei, Khakass cattle breeders lived. Buryats lived in Uangary and Baikal. Their main occupation was cattle breeding. The Buryats were already on the way to the formation of a class society. In the Amur region lived the more economically developed Daur and Ducher tribes.
The Yakuts occupied the territory formed by Lena, Aldan and Amgoy. Separate groups were located on the river. Yana, in the mouth of Vilyui and Zhigansk region. In total, according to Russian documents, there were about 25-26 thousand Yakuts at that time. By the time the Russians appeared, the Yakuts were a single people with a single language, common territory and common culture. The Yakuts were at the stage of decomposition of the primitive communal system. The main major community groups there were tribes and clans. In the economy of the Yakuts, the processing of iron was widely developed, from which weapons, blacksmith's accessories and other tools of labor were made. The blacksmith was highly respected by the Yakuts (more than a shaman). The main wealth of the Yakuts was cattle. The Yakuts led a semi-sedentary life. In the summer they went to winter roads, they also had summer, spring and autumn pastures. In the Yakut economy, much attention was paid to hunting and fishing. The Yakuts lived in yurts-booths, insulated with turf and earth in winter time, and in summer - in birch bark dwellings (ursa) and in light huts. Much power belonged to the ancestor-toyon. He had from 300 to 900 head of cattle. The Toyons were surrounded by chakhardar servants - from slaves and domestic servants. But the Yakuts had few slaves, and they did not determine the method of production. Poor kinsfolk were not yet the object of the birth of feudal exploitation. There was also no private ownership of the hunting and fishing grounds, but the hayfields were distributed among individual families.

Siberian Khanate

At the beginning of the 15th century. in the process of the collapse of the Golden Horde, the Siberian Khanate was formed, the center of which was originally Chimga-Tura (Tyumen). The Khanate united many Turkic-speaking peoples, rallied within its framework into the Siberian Tatars. At the end of the 15th century. after long feuds, power was seized by Mamed, who united the Tatar uluses along the Tobol and the middle Irtysh and placed his headquarters in an ancient fortification on the banks of the Irtysh - "Siberia", or "Kashlyk".
The Siberian Khanate consisted of small uluses, at the head of which were beks and murzas, who constituted the ruling class. They distributed pastures and fishing grounds and turned the best pastures and water sources into private property. Islam spread among the nobility, which became the official religion of the Siberian Khanate. The main labor population consisted of "black" ulus people. They paid the murza, or bek, annual "gifts" from the products of their economy and a tribute-yasak to the khan, carried military service in the detachments of the ulus bey. The khanate exploited the labor of slaves - "yasyrs" and poor, dependent community members. The Siberian Khanate was ruled by the Khan with the help of advisers and Karachi (vizier), as well as the Yasauls, who were sent by the Khan to the uluses. Ulus beks and murzas were vassals of the khan, who did not interfere with the internal order of life of the ulus. Political history The Siberian Khanate was full of internal strife. The Siberian khans, pursuing a policy of conquest, seized the lands of part of the Bashkir tribes and the possessions of the Ugrians and Turkic-speaking inhabitants of the Irtysh region and the basin of the river. Omi.
Siberian Khanate by the middle of the XVI century. located in a vast area of ​​the forest-steppe of Western Siberia from the basin of the river. Tours in the west and up to Baraba in the east. In 1503, Ibak's grandson Kuchum seized power in the Siberian Khanate with the help of Uzbek and Nogai feudal lords. The Siberian Khanate under Kuchum, which consisted of separate, economically almost unrelated uluses, was politically very fragile, and with any military defeat inflicted on Kuchum, this state of Siberian Tatars was condemned to end its existence.

Accession of Siberia to Russia

The natural wealth of Siberia - furs - has long attracted attention. Already at the end of the 15th century. enterprising people penetrated the "stone belt" (Urals). With the formation of the Russian state, its rulers and merchants saw in Siberia the possibility of great enrichment, especially since it had been undertaken since the end of the 15th century. searches for precious metal ores have not yet yielded success.
To a certain extent, the penetration of Russia into Siberia can be put on a par with the penetration of some European powers into overseas countries with the aim of pumping out jewelry from them. However, there were also significant differences.
The initiative in the development of ties came not only from the Russian state, but also from the Siberian Khanate, which in 1555, after the liquidation of the Kazan Khanate, became a neighbor of the Russian state and asked for patronage in the struggle against the Central Asian rulers. Siberia entered into a vassal relationship with Moscow and paid tribute to it in furs. But in the 70s, in connection with the weakening of the Russian state, the Siberian khans began attacks on the Russian possessions. On their way stood the fortifications of the merchants Stroganovs, who had already begun to send their expeditions to Western Siberia to buy furs, and in 1574. received a royal charter with the right to build fortresses on the Irtysh and own lands along the Tobol to ensure the trade route to Bukhara. Although this plan was not carried out, the Stroganovs managed to organize a campaign of the Cossack squad of Yermak Timofeevich, who went to the Irtysh and by the end of 1582, after a fierce battle, took the capital of the Siberian Khanate, Kashlyk, and expelled Khan Kuchum. Many vassals of Kuchum from among the Siberian peoples subject to the khan went over to the side of Ermak. After several years of struggle, which continued with varying success (Ermak died in 1584), the Siberian Khanate was finally destroyed.
In 1586 the fortress of Tyumen was erected, and in 1587 - Tobolsk, which became the Russian center of Siberia.
A stream of trade and service people rushed to Siberia. But in addition to them, peasants, Cossacks, and townspeople who fled from serfdom moved there.

The number of the indigenous population of Siberia before the beginning of Russian colonization was about 200 thousand people. The northern (tundra) part of Siberia was inhabited by the Samoyed tribes, called Samoyeds in Russian sources: Nenets, Enets and Nganasans.

The main economic occupation of these tribes was reindeer herding and hunting, and fishing in the lower reaches of the Ob, Taz and Yenisei. The main objects of the fishery were arctic fox, sable, ermine. Fur was the main commodity in the payment of yasak and in trade. They also paid with Pushnina as kalym for the girls they chose to be their wives. The number of Siberian Samoyeds, including the southern Samoyed tribes, reached about 8 thousand people.

To the south of the Nenets lived the Ugric-speaking tribes of the Khanty (Ostyaks) and Mansi (Voguls). The Khanty were engaged in fishing and hunting, in the area of ​​the Gulf of Ob they had reindeer herds. The main occupation of the Mansi was hunting. Before the arrival of the Russian Mansi on the river. Toure and Tavde were engaged in primitive agriculture, cattle breeding, beekeeping. The settlement area of ​​the Khanty and Mansi included the areas of the Middle and Lower Ob with tributaries, rr. Irtysh, Demyanka and Konda, as well as the western and eastern slopes of the Middle Urals. The total number of the Ugric-speaking tribes of Siberia in the 17th century reached 15-18 thousand people.

To the east of the area of ​​settlement of the Khanty and Mansi lay the lands of the southern Samoyeds, southern or Narym Selkups. For a long time, the Russians called the Narym Selkups Ostyaks because of the similarity of their material culture with the Khanty one. Selkups lived along the middle reaches of the river. Ob and its tributaries. The main economic activity was seasonal fishing and hunting. They hunted fur-bearing animals, elk, wild deer, upland and waterfowl. Before the arrival of the Russians, the southern Samoyedians were united in a military alliance, called in Russian sources the Pied Horde, led by Prince Vony.

In the east of the Narym Selkups, the tribes of the Keto-speaking population of Siberia lived: the Kets (Yenisei Ostyaks), Arins, Kotts, Yastyntsy (4-6 thousand people), who settled along the Middle and Upper Yenisei. Their main occupations were hunting and fishing. Some groups of the population mined iron from the ore, products from which they sold to neighbors or used on the farm.

The upper reaches of the Ob and its tributaries, the upper reaches of the Yenisei, Altai were inhabited by numerous and very different in terms of economic structure Turkic tribes - the ancestors of modern Shors, Altai, Khakass: Tomsk, Chulym and "Kuznetsk" Tatars (about 5-6 thousand people), Teleuts ( white Kalmyks) (about 7-8 thousand people), the Yenisei Kirghiz with their subordinate tribes (8-9 thousand people). The main occupation of most of these peoples was nomadic cattle breeding. In some places of this vast territory, hoe farming and hunting were developed. The "Kuznetsk" Tatars had a developed blacksmith trade.

The Sayan Highlands were occupied by the Samoyed and Turkic tribes of Mator, Karagas, Kamasin, Kachin, Kaisot, etc., with a total population of about 2 thousand people. They were engaged in cattle breeding, horse breeding, hunting, knew farming skills.

To the south of the areas inhabited by the Mansi, Selkups and Kets, Turkic-speaking ethno-territorial groups were widespread - the ethnic predecessors of the Siberian Tatars: the Baraba, Terenin, Irtysh, Tobolsk, Ishim and Tyumen Tatars. By the middle of the XVI century. a significant part of the Turks of Western Siberia (from Tura in the west to Baraba in the east) was under the rule of the Siberian Khanate. The main occupation of the Siberian Tatars was hunting, fishing; cattle breeding was developed in the Barabinskaya steppe. Before the arrival of the Russians, the Tatars were already engaged in agriculture. There was home production of leather, felt, edged weapons, and the manufacture of furs. Tatars acted as intermediaries in transit trade between Moscow and Central Asia.

To the west and east of Lake Baikal there were Mongolian-speaking Buryats (about 25 thousand people), known in Russian sources as “brothers” or “fraternal people”. The basis of their economy was nomadic cattle breeding. Ancillary occupation was agriculture and gathering. The iron-making craft has received a fairly high development.

A significant territory from the Yenisei to the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, from the northern tundra to the Amur region was inhabited by the Tungus tribes of the Evenks and Evens (about 30 thousand people). They were divided into “reindeer” (who were raising reindeer), which were the majority, and “foot”. “Hiking” Evenks and Evens were sedentary fishermen and hunted sea animals on the coast of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. Hunting was one of the main occupations of both groups. The main game animals were moose, wild deer, and bears. Domestic reindeer were used by the Evenks as pack and riding animals.

The territory of Priamurye and Primorye was inhabited by peoples who spoke the Tungus-Manchzhurian languages ​​- the ancestors of the modern Nanai, Ulchi, Udegeis. Small groups of Nivkhs (Gilyaks) who lived in the vicinity of the Tungus-Manchzhur peoples of the Amur region also belonged to the Paleoasian group of peoples inhabiting this territory. They were also the main inhabitants of Sakhalin. The Nivkhs were the only people of the Amur region that widely used sled dogs in their economic activities.

The middle course of the river. Lena, upper Yana, Olenek, Aldan, Amga, Indigirka and Kolyma were occupied by Yakuts (about 38 thousand people). It was the most numerous people among the Turks of Siberia. They raised cattle, horses. Hunting for animals and poultry and fishing were considered subsidiary trades. Domestic production of metal was widely developed: copper, iron, silver. Weapons were made in large quantities, skins were skillfully made, belts were woven, and wooden household items and utensils were carved.

The northern part of Eastern Siberia was inhabited by the Yukaghir tribes (about 5 thousand people). The boundaries of their lands stretched from the tundra of Chukotka in the east to the lower reaches of the Lena and Olenek in the west. The northeast of Siberia was inhabited by peoples belonging to the Paleo-Asian linguistic family: Chukchi, Koryak, Itelmen. The Chukchi occupied a significant part of the continental Chukotka. Their number was about 2.5 thousand people. The southern neighbors of the Chukchi were the Koryaks (9-10 thousand people), very close in language and culture to the Chukchi. They occupied the entire northwestern part of the Okhotsk coast and the part of Kamchatka adjacent to the mainland. The Chukchi and Koryaks were divided, like the Tungus, into "reindeer" and "foot".

Eskimos (about 4 thousand people) settled along the entire coastal strip of the Chukchi Peninsula. The main population of Kamchatka in the 17th century. were the Itelmens (12 thousand people). In the south of the peninsula, inhabited by a few tribes of the Ainu. The Ainu were also settled on the islands of the Kuril ridge and in the southern tip of Sakhalin.

The economic activities of these peoples were hunting for sea animals, reindeer husbandry, fishing and gathering. Before the arrival of the Russians, the peoples of northeastern Siberia and Kamchatka were still at a rather low stage of socio-economic development. In everyday life, stone and bone tools and weapons were widely used.

Hunting and fishing occupied an important place in the life of practically all Siberian peoples before the arrival of the Russians. A special role was assigned to the extraction of furs, which was the main subject of trade exchange with neighbors and was used as the main payment for tribute - yasak.

Most of the Siberian peoples in the 17th century. Russians were found at various stages of patriarchal-clan relations. The most backward forms of social organization were noted among the tribes of northeastern Siberia (Yukaghirs, Chukchi, Koryaks, Itelmens and Eskimos). In the area of social relations some of them had features of domestic slavery, the dominant position of women, etc.

The most developed in socio-economic terms were the Buryats and Yakuts, who at the turn of the XVI-XVII centuries. developed patriarchal-feudal relations. The only people who had their own statehood at the time of the arrival of the Russians were the Tatars, united under the rule of the Siberian khans. Siberian Khanate by the middle of the XVI century. covered an area stretching from the Tura basin in the west to Baraba in the east. However, this state formation was not monolithic, torn apart by internecine clashes between various dynastic groups. Inclusion in the 17th century. Siberia into the Russian state radically changed the natural course of the historical process in the region and the fate of the indigenous peoples of Siberia. The beginning of the deformation of traditional culture was associated with the arrival in the region of a population with a productive type of economy, which assumed a different type of human relationship to nature, to cultural values ​​and traditions.

Religiously, the peoples of Siberia belonged to different belief systems. The most common form of belief was shamanism based on animism - the spiritualization of forces and phenomena of nature. A distinctive feature of shamanism is the belief that certain people - shamans - have the ability to enter into direct communication with spirits - patrons and assistants of the shaman in the fight against diseases.

Since the 17th century. in Siberia, Orthodox Christianity spread widely, Buddhism penetrated in the form of Lamaism. Even earlier, Islam penetrated the Siberian Tatars. Among a number of peoples of Siberia, shamanism acquired sophisticated forms under the influence of Christianity and Buddhism (Tuvans, Buryats). In the XX century. this whole system of beliefs coexisted with the atheistic (materialistic) worldview, which was the official state ideology. At present, a revival of shamanism is observed among a number of Siberian peoples.


Since ancient times, numerous peoples have lived in Siberia. They were called differently: Scythians, Sarmatians, Sery, Issedons, Samariks, Rus, Rusyns, etc. Due to cataclysms, climate change and other reasons, many migrated, mixed with other races or died.

Those who survived in these harsh conditions and survived to this day, scientists present to us as indigenous people - but these are mainly Mongoloids and Turks, and Slavic peoples appeared in Siberia, as it were, after Yermak. But is it really so?

The most famous definition of the names of ancient peoples, these are the Aryans and Scythians, their artifacts, burials in barrows, leave no doubt that they are Caucasians. But science divides us into two camps, those artifacts that were found in Europe from the Scythians and Aryans are ranked among the European peoples, and what outside Europe are referred to as the Turks and Mongoloids. But the new science of genetics has dotted the "i's", although there are attempts at fraud. Let's take a look at the Slavic and other peoples that have inhabited the vast expanses of Siberia since ancient times, which have come down to our times.


Many people cannot understand who the Ostyaks are? Here are scattered concepts from various sources.

Ostyaks is the old name of the Ob Ugrians - Khanty and Mansi. It comes from the self-name As-yah - "a man from the Big River". As-ya - so the Ugrians called the Ob river. Samoyeds were called Samoyed tribes - for example, the Nenets. Ostyako-Samoyeds are Selkups.


And what does "Vicki" tell us: "Ostyaks - outdated name peoples living in Siberia: the Khanty, the Kets (also the Yenisei Ostyaks), the Yugras (also the Symsk Ostyaks), the Selkups (also the Samoyed Ostyaks). "

And here is what the Encyclopedic Dictionary of F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron:

"The Ostyaks are a Finno-Ugric tribe living along the Ob, Irtysh and their tributaries (Konda, Vasyugan, etc.), in the Tobolsk province and in the Narym district of the province. It is divided into three groups: northern - in the Berezovsky district, eastern - in Surgut, in Narymsky (along the Vasyugan river) and southwestern or Irtyshsky - in the northern part of the Tobolsk district, along the banks of the Ob, Irtysh, Konda, etc. Keti. But this small, dying people has nothing to do with the real Ostyaks and should be considered akin to Kotts, Koibals and other southern Samoyed peoples, now otatarized "...

And here is what the ancient chronicle says: "The piebald Horde, the Ostyaks and Samoyad have no law, but they worship idols and offer sacrifices as if to God." haplogroup N, today they are known as Finno-Ugrians.


If you recall, then the armed forces of the Great Russian Medieval Empire were divided into Hordes. The most famous of them are the Golden Horde - Great Russia, White Horde - Belarus and Blue Horde - Little Russia ( modern Ukraine). These three main old Russian Hordes have come down to our times and are recognizable. Let's remember the colors: red, white and blue. The Blue Horde has betrayed us more than once, many times has been under the yoke of conquerors from Western countries, so the capital from Kievan Rus finally moved to Moscow.

But there was another Horde, in Siberia and it was called the Pied Horde, its native color is green. The Piebald Horde of Siberia was multinational, one of its tribes - the Turks, gave the color of the banner to many Muslim countries. We find a mention of it, for example, in the "Dictionary of the Russian language of the XI-XVII centuries", from which it is clear that the Pied Horde existed in Siberia, up to the borders of China, even in the XVII century: "A drawing ... to the Muscovite ... from the Ob River up the Ob, Obdorskaya and Yugorskaya and Siberian lands to Narym, to the Pied Horde "(790), p. 64.

The piebald Horde in Siberia is hushed up or data about it is distorted, in the evidence of the past of this Horde, many of its military units served in Russia-Horde. Some of these tribes appear under the names MADYARS, MADJARS, MOGOLS, MONGOLS, UGRY, BASHKIRS, YASY, YAZYG, VENGR, HUN, KUN, GUN, PECHENEG. For example, there was a warrior tribe among them, which had a dog depicted on its banner, for them it was a cult animal. That is why in Europe they were called psoglavtsy, from the dog's head. The last time the Czech Cossacks were called "moves" foot soldiers. Hody-Cossacks lived along the border of the Czech Republic and Bavaria. They maintained a typical Cossack way of life, at least until the middle of the seventeenth century. V last time Cossacks-psoglavtsy carried their military service in 1620, when the Czech Republic lost its national independence. But do not confuse them with dog-heads - in the Middle Ages, these were rare wild people, presumably Neanderthals.

All these peoples listed above, in the past the Scythians, Sarmatians, Aryans ... This is in the Pied Horde of Siberia, the scattered troops of Razin, and then of Pugachev, recruited reinforcements into their ranks and left for China, where they united with the Manzhurs, which indicates that that the manzhurs were their own for the Volga, Yaitsk and Siberian Cossacks, as well as for the Kalmyks. By the way, the Kalmyks who lived in the Don region in Russia until 1917 were in the rank of Cossacks.

In their culture, religion, way of life and appearance, members of the piebald hordes were fundamentally different from the peoples of Central Europe. Therefore, their appearance in the region was perceived by contemporaries as a bright event and reflected it in their testimonies. The men of the piebald hordes were mainly carriers of the R1a1 haplogroup. Therefore, their descendants do not stand out among modern Europeans and Hungarians. Among the latter, according to some data, 60% (sample of 45 people) are carriers of the haplogroup R1a1 (Semino, 2000, The genetic), according to others (sample of 113 people) - 20.4% (Tambets, 2004).

In the 15th century, the descendants of the piebald hordes of Hungary took part in the Balkan wars and the conquest of Byzantium by the Turks. Most likely, the word TURKi was one of their names. Some of the already Hungarian participants in these wars remained in the Balkans and Anatolia. After the detachment of the Attoman Empire from the Rus-Horde, the territory of the Middle Danube Plain became part of it. After the defeat of the Turkish army near Vienna in 1683, a gradual transfer of the territory of the plain to the rule of Vienna began. Some of the natives of the Pied Horde tribes retained their colors on the flags of now different countries, here are some of them.

A significant part of the Russian people are infected with centuries-old Turkophobia, brought from Byzantium by Greek missionaries, who gradually imposed their revanchism on the Russians for their loss. Therefore, a Russian person, instead of recognizing a part of his Turkic roots, is nicer to consider all Scythians and Sarmatians as Slavs, separating them from the Turks, and in fact from himself too. The influence of Byzantine revanchism on the course of Russian history and the Russian spirit is another big topic, by the way an unexplored topic, but what does genetics tell us about this?

Let's take a look at the fossil haplotypes of the Scythians of haplogroup R1a (3800-3400 years ago):

13 25 16 11 11 14 10 14 11 32 15 14 20 12 16 11 23 (Scythians, Andronovo culture).

In the same work, excavations were carried out with a dating of 2800-1900 years ago, in the burials of the Tagar culture, in the same territory, and again only haplotypes of the R1a group were found. Although a thousand - one and a half thousand years have passed, the haplotypes have remained almost the same:

13 24/25 16 11 11 14 10 13/14 11 31 15 14 20 12/13 16 11 23 (Tagarians, R1a).

There are a couple of variants of mutations, alleles (as these numbers are called) began to diverge slightly, but even then not for all. Doubles are variants of different haplotypes from the excavation, or uncertainties in identification. So the haplotypes are really very similar, despite the rather large temporal distance, 1000-1500 years. This is the reliability of haplotypes - they change slightly over time. If they have changed in several markers, then millennia have passed. It is also important here that after more than a thousand years, the Scythians of the same genus, R1a, continue to live in the same places. Dozens of generations have passed, and the Scythians in Altai have the same DNA genealogical lines. Time: 1st millennium BC - the beginning of the 1st millennium AD, "official" Scythian times. But:

13/14 25 16 11 11 14 10 12/13 X 30 14/15 14 19 13 15/16 11 23 (Germany, R1a, 4600 years old).

They turned out to be very similar to the haplotype of the common ancestor of the haplogroup R1a in ethnic Russians, that is, the Eastern Slavs, to which modern haplotypes converge:

13 25 16 11 11 14 10 13 11 30 15 14 20 12 16 11 23 (ethnic Russians R1a).

Only two alleles (as these numbers are called) in fossil haplotypes differ from haplotypes of ethnic Russians, and they are in bold.

Two mutations between the haplotypes mean that the common ancestor of the "Proto-Slavic" and "Proto-German" haplotypes lived about 575 years before them, that is, about 5000 years ago. This is determined quite simply - the mutation rate constant for the given haplotypes is 0.044 mutations per haplotype per conditional generation at 25 years. Therefore, we find that their common ancestor lived for 2/2 / 0.044 = 23 generations, that is, 23x25 = 575 years before them. This places their common ancestor at (4600 + 4800 + 575) / 2 = 5000 years ago, which is consistent (within the calculation error) with the "age" of the common ancestor of the genus R1a on the Russian Plain, determined independently.

We look above at the haplotype from Germany and at the haplotypes of the Eastern Slavs, for comparison with the haplotypes of the Scythians from the Minusinsk depression:

13 25 16 11 11 14 10 14 11 32 15 14 20 12 16 11 23 (Scythians, R1a)

The difference between the haplotype of the Scythians and the haplotype of the common ancestor of the Slavs is only in a pair of 14-32 in the fossil haplotypes (marked) and 13-30 in the ancestors of the Russian Slavs.

In other words, the Eastern Slavs and Scythians of the Minusinsk Basin are not only one genus, R1a, but also a direct and rather close relationship at the haplotype level.

Below are examples of modern haplotypes of their direct descendants:

13 25 15 11 11 14 12 12 10 14 11 32 - India
13 25 15 10 11 14 12 13 10 14 11 32 - Iran
13 25 16 11 11 13 12 12 11 14 11 32 - UAE
13 24 15 10 11 14 12 12 10 14 11 32 - Saudi Arabia
13 25 16 11 11 14 Х Х 10 14 11 32 - Fossil haplotype of the Scythians, 3800-3400 years old.

And among the Kyrgyz, this haplotype is ancestral for the entire Kyrgyz population of the haplogroup R1a-L342.2:
13 25 16 11 11 14 12 12 10 14 11 32 - 15 9 11 11 11 23 14 21 31 12 15 15 16 with a common ancestor who lived 2100, plus or minus 250 years ago. "Classic" times of the Scythians, the end of the last era. It turns out that the Kyrgyz of the haplogroup R1a (of which they have a lot) are direct descendants of the ancient Scythians.

So we come to the conclusion that with regard to the origin of clans and tribes, haplogroups and subclades in DNA genealogy, the concepts of Aryans, Scythians, Eastern Slavs are interrelated and interchangeable in a number of contexts. We simply attribute them to different time periods, and sometimes to different territories. This is what we attribute, to simplify the consideration, but rather, on the basis of the well-established traditions of historical science. It is clear that the Kyrgyz are not Slavs, just as they are not Slavs and Arabs. But they are all descendants of common Aryan ancestors. These are the branches of the same tree, the Slavs and Scythians are the descendants of the same common ancestors, the Aryans, carriers of the haplogroup R1a.

Below is a table of the frequency of key haplogroups of the Y-chromosome of the peoples of Eurasia (Tambets, 2004)

Let's continue.

It is surprising that in Russian cartography and historical science the name of the country or area in Siberia - Lukomoria, was not known. Consequently, Western cartographers used earlier, long before Yermak, information about Lukomoria.

On the map of 1683 by J. Cantelli, south of Lucomoria, the inscription Samaricgui (or Samariegui) is made. Who or what samariks are, recently found out the Tomsk doctor of historical sciences, Galina Ivanovna Pelikh (1922 - 1999). She published a detailed article about the first Russian settlers, who were called Samaras and who, according to legend, came to Siberia from the Samara River, which flows into the Dnieper on the left. But was it really so? Galina Pelikh began to deal with this issue and suggested that the departure of the Samars to the troubled 13th-14th centuries because of the Don to Siberia could be caused by the fact that "terrible wars" began there. This is probably why the name of these people as cheldon-chaldon (a man from the Don) took root in Siberia. But Don in Old Russian means a river and wherever rivers flowed, they were commonly called Don (water). From here: to the bottom, bottom, ship, etc. Along with the generalized name, the rivers were given a name.

When studying these names on world maps, both known and unknown authors from the collection of Count Vorontsov, on them the localization of Grustina is less definite and varies along the Ob from Lake Zaisan to the mouth of the Irtysh. In addition to Sadina, all these maps indicate the city of Cambalech (Khanbalik), located in the upper reaches of the Ob and Serponov, changing its location from the upper Keti to the upper Poluy.


The indigenous population of Siberia clearly distinguished the post-Ermak settlers, who were considered colonizers, and local Russians, both who lived here and who came "for the Stone" ( Ural mountains) much earlier than their compatriots, who are not similar to their European counterparts either in dialect or mentality.

After Yermak, Russian immigrants, having met their fellow blood brothers in Siberia, called them chaldons and kerzhaks. They differed among themselves as follows: Kerzhaks are Old Believers who fled to Siberia from religious oppression, Chaldons are old-timers of Siberia who have lived here from time immemorial, mixed with settlers from the Don, Dnieper and Samara, who were also forced to leave their homes because of religious wars associated with the Christianization of Rus. Therefore, in Siberia, it is customary to call old-timers and descendants of the first Russian settlers, who distinguish themselves from Siberian Cossacks and indigenous people, by chaldons.

Galina Ivanovna Pelikh successfully worked for a long time in the city of Tomsk, he was a remarkable scientist-ethnographer, professor of the Department of Archeology and History of Local History at Tomsk University. She specialized in the study of life, language, history and culture of the Selkups, a small people of the North.

For a long time, this people of the Samoyed language group has lived in two isolated enclaves. One part is in the upper reaches of the Taz River and in the circumpolar Yenisei, and the other is in the middle reaches of the Ob, more precisely in the Tomsk region.
During her scientific life, Galina Ivanovna traveled around many remote places of Western Siberia. Among her respondents and casual acquaintances during the expeditions came across Russian old-timers Chaldons.

She also met those who had nothing to do with the peoples who fled to Siberia because of religious oppression. They also had nothing to do with the Cherdynians, the Mezens and the Ustyuzhans, etc.
But what kind of people are they, Chaldons?

Galina Ivanovna, in her scientific expeditions, simultaneously wrote down stories, traditions and legends of the Chaldon old-timers. Shortly before her death, she finally found time to distract herself from the Selkup theme and pay attention to the materials on chaldons that had accumulated over decades. She wrote: "I had to repeatedly over the course of 30 years (starting from the 40s) to visit various villages of the Middle Ob region, collecting material on the ethnography of the Narym Selkups. The Russian population of those places was of little interest to me. numerous mentions of some Kayalovs and a number of stories written down from their words, both about the Selkups and about the Siberian old-timers Kayalovs themselves and about their distant ancestral home on the Kayala River ".

For specialists studying the history of Siberia, her article "Obskie Kayalovs about the Kayala River" produced the effect of a bomb exploding. True, most scientists have not expressed their assessment of this powerful in its significance, but small in volume, material. Maybe they never read it, or maybe they didn't want to read it. Although not all. Professor of Tomsk and Altai State Universities Aleksey Mikhailovich Maloletko, did a lot to popularize Galina Ivanovna's discoveries, and was also able to offer his vision of the history of the origin of the chaldons. His article "The First Russian Colony in Siberia" found a great response from readers. Long before these authors, Mikhail Fedorovich Rosen, an Altai scientist and ethnographer, drew attention to the reports of many pre-Ermakian sources about ancient geographical names common in Siberia: "Lukomorye", "Samara", "Sadness", etc.


So, what are these people? Chaldons for hundreds of centuries lived in Siberia in closed communities, having managed to preserve the Russian language in its original performance, which allows them to firmly identify them as a people of Russian origin. The many outdated forms of sounding of Russian words, terms that have dropped out of our language, original phrases and much more, even with a cursory acquaintance with the speech samples of the Chaldons, allow linguists to draw a certain conclusion about the long-standing separation of representatives of this people from the main Russian-speaking array.

Stolypin reform and events Soviet period, completely destroyed the usual way of life of Chaldon villages. Currently, there are practically no such settlements in Siberia. Some of the settlers who joined the Siberian old-timers have preserved the legends about their past. Galina Ivanovna had the happy opportunity to write down the legends and stories of some of the chaldons, who have preserved the stable oral tradition of their own history.

According to their stories, the chaldons came to Siberia 10-15 generations before Ermak, i.e. no later than the XIII century. The storytellers gave Galina Pelikh oral information about only a few families (births), referring to the fact that they had come to Siberia to places that had long been mastered by other Chaldon families. Before that, they lived in the Black Sea steppes between the Don and Dnieper rivers. There they were called "samaras" and called "pajo".

According to the Kayalovs, in their old homeland around them lived the same as them, Russian people who called themselves "Samaras": "The Samaras were absolutely nothing!" The Kayalovs themselves lived on a tributary of the Samara River, which flows into the Dnieper. She had a name - Kajala. They carried their surname from the name of this river. Its name in this form has not survived to this day.

The Chaldons were mainly pagans, only some of them, being immigrants, were Christianized in ancient times. But due to the lack of connection with religious centers, their Christian faith degenerated, creating a kind of simplified symbiosis of paganism with elements of Christianity.

The official church could not allow this, considering them pagans and apostates, and therefore the word "chaldon" in the mouths of the Cossacks and other Siberian new settlers began to be deliberately derogatory, derogatory: narrow-minded, stubborn, underdeveloped.

These factors influenced not only the negative attitude towards the Chaldons, but also the suppression of their merits in the development of Siberia. Not a single chronicle, not a single document of the Muscovite kingdom speaks directly about the early Chaldon population of Siberia, just like about other Russian peoples and about the Cossacks of Siberia, even before Ermakov's times. Semyon Ulyanovich Remezov has some information about chaldons and samaras in his "History of Siberia" and in some other Russian documents of the 16th-17th centuries.

On the map of the Dutch cartographer Abraham Ortelius, published eleven years before Yermak's campaign, the settlement of Tsingolo (chaldons) was shown in the Middle Ob region.

Galina Pelikh noted that some of the chaldons divide themselves into two groups. Those who came from the Don called themselves chaldons. And those that came "because of the Don" are Samaras. Both groups ridicule each other for speaking patterns, habits, etc. But among the newcomer chaldons, there were also indigenous people, those who were joined by the settlers. These indigenous, which had no name before, in even more ancient times were called Sindons, Issedons, they are also sulfur with the localization of residence in the country of Serik (Siberia) - the direct ancestors of the Serbs.

If you remember, in Scythian times on the territory of present Siberia lived what scientists call them - Andronovites. Some of them moved to the territory of present-day India and it was there that their language, called Sanskrit, was preserved, and in fact it is the Old Russian language. But no matter how they are called, this is what those ancient pro-Russian peoples, a small part of which have survived, have survived. This is an illustrative example of the same language group, when our ancestors inhabited India (Dravidia), you will understand Old Russian and Sanskrit without translation. Another indicative example of the migration of peoples and the exchange of cultures, when some part of the Proto-Slavic peoples from India moved back, bypassing the territory Central Asia having passed the Caspian, crossing the Volga, they settled in the territory of the Kuban, these were the Sindi. After they formed the basis of the Azov Cossack army. Around the 13th century, some of them went to the mouth of the Dnieper, where they began to be called Zaporozhye Cossacks. But the proto-Slavic peoples of Siberia, who made a long transition to India, and then to the Kuban, for a long time among the rest of the Cossacks of Russia were called Tartars, and then Tatars.

Continuation

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Indigenous peoples of Siberia in modern world... Municipal budgetary educational institution "Gymnasium No. 17", Kemerovo Compiled by: teacher of history and social studies Kapustyanskaya T.N.

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The largest peoples before Russian colonization include the following peoples: Itelmens (indigenous people of Kamchatka), Yukaghirs (inhabited the main territory of the tundra), Nivkhs (residents of Sakhalin), Tuvinians (indigenous population of the Republic of Tuva), Siberian Tatars (located on the territory of Southern Siberia from Urals to the Yenisei) and Selkups (residents of Western Siberia).

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The Yakuts are the most numerous of the Siberian peoples. According to the latest data, the number of Yakuts is 478,100 people. In modern Russia, the Yakuts are one of the few nationalities that have their own republic, and its area is comparable to the area of ​​an average European state. The Republic of Yakutia (Sakha) is geographically located in the Far Eastern Federal District, but the ethnic group "Yakuts" has always been considered an indigenous Siberian people. The Yakuts have an interesting culture and traditions. This is one of the few peoples of Siberia that has its own epic.

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Buryats are another Siberian people with their own republic. The capital of Buryatia is the city of Ulan-Ude, located to the east of Lake Baikal. The number of Buryats is 461,389 people. In Siberia, Buryat cuisine is widely known, which is rightfully considered one of the best among ethnic ones. The history of this people, its legends and traditions are quite interesting. By the way, the Republic of Buryatia is one of the main centers of Buddhism in Russia.

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Tuvans. According to the latest census, 263,934 identified themselves as representatives of the Tuvan people. The Tuva Republic is one of the four ethnic republics of the Siberian Federal District. Its capital is the city of Kyzyl with a population of 110 thousand people. The total population of the republic is approaching 300 thousand. Buddhism also flourishes here, and the traditions of Tuvans also speak of shamanism.

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Khakass is one of the indigenous peoples of Siberia, numbering 72 959 people. Today they have their own republic as part of the Siberian Federal District and with the capital in the city of Abakan. This ancient people have long lived on the lands to the west of the Great Lake (Baikal). He was never numerous, which did not prevent him from carrying his identity, culture and traditions through the centuries.

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Altaians. Their place of residence is quite compact - it is the Altai mountain system. Today Altai people live in two regions Russian Federation- Republic of Altai and Altai Territory. The population of the ethnos "Altaians" is about 71 thousand people, which allows us to speak of them as a fairly large people. Religion - Shamanism and Buddhism. The Altaians have their own epos and a pronounced national identity, which does not allow them to be confused with other Siberian peoples. This mountain people has a long history and interesting legends.

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The Nenets are one of the small Siberian peoples compactly living in the region of the Kola Peninsula. Its population of 44,640 people makes it possible to classify it as a small nation, the traditions and culture of which are protected by the state. The Nenets are nomadic reindeer herders. They belong to the so-called Samoyed folk group. Over the years of the 20th century, the number of Nenets has approximately doubled, which indicates the effectiveness of state policy in the field of preserving the small peoples of the North. The Nenets have their own language and oral epic.

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The Evenks are a people predominantly living on the territory of the Republic of Sakha. The number of this people in Russia is 38,396 people, some of whom live in the regions adjacent to Yakutia. It should be said that this is about half of the total population of the ethnic group - about the same number of Evenks live in China and Mongolia. The Evenks are a people of the Manchu group that do not have their own language and epic. Tungus is considered the native language of the Evenks. Evenks are born hunters and trackers.

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The Khanty are the indigenous people of Siberia, belonging to the Ugric group. Most of the Khanty live in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug, which is part of the Ural Federal Okrug of Russia. The total number of Khanty is 30,943 people. On the territory of the Siberian Federal District about 35% of the Khanty live, and the lion's share is in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District. The traditional occupations of the Khanty are fishing, hunting and reindeer herding. The ancestral religion is shamanism, but lately more and more Khanty consider themselves to be Orthodox Christians.

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The Evens are a people related to the Evenks. According to one version, they represent the Evenk group, which was cut off from the main aureole of residence by the Yakuts advancing to the south. A long time away from the main ethnos made the Evens a separate people. Today their number is 21 830 people. The language is Tungus. Place of residence - Kamchatka, Magadan region, Republic of Sakha.

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The Chukchi are a nomadic Siberian people who are mainly engaged in reindeer husbandry and live on the territory of the Chukotka Peninsula. Their number is about 16 thousand people. The Chukchi belong to the Mongoloid race and, according to many anthropologists, are the indigenous aborigines of the Far North. The main religion is animism. The indigenous trades are hunting and reindeer husbandry.

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The Shors are a Turkic-speaking people living in the southeastern part of Western Siberia, mainly in the south of the Kemerovo region (in Tashtagol, Novokuznetsk, Mezhdurechensky, Myskovsky, Osinnikovsky and other districts). Their number is about 13 thousand people. The main religion is shamanism. The Shor epic is of scientific interest primarily for its originality and antiquity. The history of the people dates back to the 6th century. Today the traditions of the Shors have survived only in Sheregesh, as most of the ethnic group moved to cities and largely assimilated.

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Muncie. This nation has been known to Russians since the beginning of the founding of Siberia. Even Ivan the Terrible sent a host against the Mansi, which suggests that they were quite numerous and strong. The self-name of this people is Voguls. They have their own language, a fairly developed epic. Today their place of residence is the territory of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug. According to the latest census, 12,269 people identified themselves as belonging to the Mansi ethnic group.

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The Nanais are a small people living along the banks of the Amur River in the Russian Far East. Belonging to the Baikal ethnotype, the Nanais are rightfully considered one of the most ancient indigenous peoples of Siberia and the Far East. Today the number of Nanai in Russia is 12,160 people. The Nanai have their own language, which is rooted in Tungus. The writing system exists only among the Russian Nanais and is based on the Cyrillic alphabet.