94-678: The Nelgesin Range (Russian: Нельгесинский хребет ) is a mountain range in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), Far Eastern Federal District , Russia. The nearest city is Batagay to the north of the range. The nearest airport is Batagay Airport . The Nelgesin Range rises in the area of the Yana-Oymyakon Highlands , part of the Chersky Mountains , to the west of the Adycha and north of
188-659: A "tendency toward syncretism ", as evidenced by the locals sometimes first inviting a shaman, and then an Orthodox priest to carry out their rites in connection with some event in their life. According to the Information Center under the President of Sakha Republic (Информационный центр при Президенте РС(Я)), the religious demography of the republic was as follows: Orthodoxy: 44.9%, Shamanism: 26.2%, Non-religious: 23.0%, New religious movements: 2.4%, Islam: 1.2%, Buddhism: 1.0%, Protestantism: 0.9%, Catholicism: 0.4%. According to
282-467: A 2012 survey, 37.8% of the population of Sakha adheres to the Russian Orthodox Church , 13% to Tengrism or Sakha shamanism , 2% to Islam , 1% are unaffiliated Christians , 1% to forms of Protestantism , and 0.4% to Tibetan Buddhism . In addition, 26% of the population deems itself atheist , 17% is "spiritual but not religious", and 1.8% follows other religions or did not give an answer to
376-452: A Sakha lawyer and city councilor by the name of Vasily Nikiforov, which criticized the policies and effects of Russian colonialism, and demanded representation in the State Duma . The Yakut Union acted to make the city council of Yakutsk stand down and was joined by thousands of Sakha from the countryside, but the leaders were arrested and the movement fizzled out by April 1906. Their demand for
470-723: A Sakha representative in the Duma, however, was granted. Sakha was home to the last stage of the Russian Civil War, the Yakut Revolt . On April 27, 1922, former Yakutsk Oblast was proclaimed the Yakut ASSR , although in fact the eastern part of the territory, including the city of Yakutsk, was controlled by the White Russians . The early Soviet period saw a flourishing of Sakha literature as men such as Platon Oyunsky wrote down in writing
564-598: A king of the Megino-Khangalassky Sakha, began a Sakha conspiracy by allowing the first stockade construction. In August 1638, the Moscow Government formed a new administrative unit with the administrative center of Lensky Ostrog (Fort Lensky), the future city of Yakutsk , which had been founded by Pyotr Beketov in 1632. The arrival of Russian settlers at the remote Russkoye Ustye in the Indigirka delta
658-674: A region extending eastward from the Ural Mountains to the watershed between Pacific and Arctic drainage basins, and southward from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and the national borders of both Mongolia and China. By this definition, Siberia includes the federal subjects of the Siberian Federal District , and some of the Ural Federal District , as well as Sakha (Yakutia) Republic , which
752-482: A shaman temple in downtown Yakutsk in 2002. Currently, while Orthodox Christianity maintains a following (however, with very few priests willing to be stationed outside of Yakutsk), there is interest and activity toward renewing the traditional religions. As of 2008, Orthodox leaders described the worldview of the republic's indigenous population (or, rather, those among the population who are not completely indifferent to religion) as dvoyeverie (dual belief system), or
846-415: Is 0.31 per km (2019), which is one of the lowest among Russian districts. Urban population: 65,45% (2018). Source: Russian Federal State Statistics Service According to the 2021 Census , the ethnic composition was: Historical population figures are shown below: The official languages are both Russian and Sakha , also known as Yakut, which is spoken by roughly half of the republic's population. In
940-493: Is a part of the Far Eastern Federal District . Geographically, this definition includes subdivisions of several other subjects of Urals and Far Eastern federal districts, but they are not included administratively. This definition excludes Sverdlovsk Oblast and Chelyabinsk Oblast , both of which are included in some wider definitions of Siberia. Other sources may use either a somewhat wider definition that states
1034-424: Is about 0.5 °C (32.9 °F). January averages about −20 °C (−4 °F) and July about +19 °C (66 °F), while daytime temperatures in summer typically exceed 20 °C (68 °F). With a reliable growing season, an abundance of sunshine and exceedingly fertile chernozem soils, southern Siberia is good enough for profitable agriculture , as was demonstrated in the early 20th century. By far
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#17329141056101128-571: Is also believed to date from the 17th century. The Siberian Governorate was established as part of the Russian Empire in 1708. Russian settlers began to form a community in the 18th century, which adopted certain Sakha customs and was often called Yakutyane (Якутя́не) or Lena Early Settlers (ленские старожилы). However, the influx of later settlers had assimilated themselves into the Russian mainstream by
1222-631: Is culturally and politically considered European, since it is a part of Russia. Major geographical zones within Siberia include the West Siberian Plain and the Central Siberian Plateau . Eastern and central Sakha comprises numerous north–south mountain ranges of various ages. These mountains extend up to almost 3,000 metres (9,800 ft), but above a few hundred metres they are almost completely devoid of vegetation. The Verkhoyansk Range
1316-520: Is doubtful that the total early modern Siberian population exceeded 300,000 persons". The first mention of Siberia in chronicles is recorded in the year 1032. The city-state of Novgorod established two trade routes to the Ob River , and laid claim to the lands the Russians called Yugra . The Russians were attracted by its furs in particular. Novgorod launched military campaigns to extract tribute from
1410-425: Is high also in most of Primorye in the extreme south, where monsoonal influences can produce quite heavy summer rainfall. Researchers, including Sergei Kirpotin at Tomsk State University and Judith Marquand at Oxford University , warn that Western Siberia has begun to thaw as a result of global warming . The frozen peat bogs in this region may hold billions of tons of methane gas , which may be released into
1504-582: Is its capital and largest city. The republic has a reputation for an extreme and severe climate, with the second lowest temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere being recorded in Verkhoyansk and Oymyakon (second only to Summit Camp , Greenland ), and regular winter averages commonly dipping below −35 °C (−31 °F) in Yakutsk. The hypercontinental tendencies also result in warm summers for much of
1598-650: Is no longer visible. The Central Siberian Plateau is an ancient craton (sometimes named Angaraland ) that formed an independent continent before the Permian (see the Siberian continent ). It is exceptionally rich in minerals, containing large deposits of gold , diamonds , and ores of manganese , lead , zinc , nickel , cobalt , and molybdenum . Much of the area includes the Siberian Traps —a large igneous province . A massive eruptive period approximately coincided with
1692-527: Is of paleontological significance, as it contains bodies of prehistoric animals from the Pleistocene Epoch , preserved in ice or permafrost . In 2015, the frozen bodies of Dina and Uyan the cave lion cubs were found. Bodies of Yuka and another woolly mammoth from Oymyakon , a woolly rhinoceros from the Kolyma River , and bison and horses from Yukagir have also been found. In June 2019,
1786-595: Is several degrees warmer than in the East ( Irkutsk , or Chita ) where in the north an extreme winter subarctic climate (Köppen Dfd , Dwd , or Dsd ) prevails. But summer temperatures in other regions can reach +38 °C (100 °F). In general, Sakha is the coldest Siberian region, and the basin of the Yana has the lowest temperatures of all, with permafrost reaching 1,493 metres (4,898 ft). Nevertheless, Imperial Russian plans of settlement never viewed cold as an impediment. In
1880-464: Is the active volcano Klyuchevskaya Sopka , on the Kamchatka Peninsula . Its peak reaches 4,750 metres (15,580 ft). The West Siberian Plain, consisting mostly of Cenozoic alluvial deposits, is somewhat flat. In the mid-Pleistocene, many deposits on this plain resulted from ice dams which produced a large glacial lake . This mid- to late- Pleistocene lake blocked the northward flow of
1974-614: Is the city of Novosibirsk . Present-day Novosibirsk is an important business, science, manufacturing and cultural center of the Asian part of Russia. Omsk played an important role in the Russian Civil War serving as a provisional Russian capital, as well in the expansion into and governing of Central Asia . In addition to its cultural status, it has become a major oil-refining, education, transport and agriculture hub. Other historic cities of Siberia include Tobolsk (the first capital and
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#17329141056102068-609: The Ainu people ). Evidence from full genomic studies suggests that the first people in the Americas diverged from Ancient East Asians about 36,000 years ago and expanded northwards into Siberia, where they encountered and interacted with Ancient North Eurasians, giving rise to both Paleosiberian peoples and Ancient Native Americans , which later migrated towards the Beringian region, became isolated from other populations, and subsequently populated
2162-462: The Arctic Circle and all of it is covered by permafrost which greatly influences the region's ecology and limits forests in the southern region. Arctic and subarctic tundra define the middle region, where lichen and moss grow as great green carpets and are favorite pastures for reindeer . In the southern part of the tundra belt, scattered stands of dwarf Siberian pine and larch grow along
2256-456: The Arctic Ocean . It is further defined as stretching from the territories within the Arctic Circle in the north to the northern borders of Kazakhstan , Mongolia , and China in the south, although the hills of north-central Kazakhstan are also commonly included. The Russian government divides the region into three federal districts (groupings of Russian federal subjects ), of which only
2350-647: The Derbeke . It stretches in a roughly southwest–northeast direction for about 140 kilometers (87 mi), with the Adycha at its northern end. The highest peak is a 1,926 metres (6,319 ft) high unnamed summit. The smaller Tirekhtyakh Range , another subrange of the Chersky Mountains, rises to the north, stretching parallel to the general direction of the Nelgesin Range. Sakha Republic Sakha , officially
2444-601: The Evenk term Yako (also yoqo , ñoqa , or ñoka ), which was the term the Evenks used to describe the Sakha. This was in turn picked up by the Russians. The Yukaghirs , another neighboring people in Siberia , use the exonym yoqol ~ yoqod- ~ yoqon- ( Tundra Yukaghir ) or yaqal ~ yaqad- ~ yaqan- ( Kolyma Yukaghir ). The self-designation Sakha is probably of the same origin (* jaqa > Sakha following regular sound changes in
2538-645: The Late Carboniferous through Jurassic Verkhoyansk foldbelt , on the northwest by the Paleozoic Taymr foldbelt, and on the southeast, south and southwest by the Middle Silurian to Middle Devonian Baykalian foldbelt. A regional geologic reconnaissance study begun in 1932 and followed by surface and subsurface mapping revealed the Markova-Angara Arch ( anticline ). This led to the discovery of
2632-614: The Ob and Yenisey rivers, resulting in a redirection southwest into the Caspian and Aral seas via the Turgai Valley . The area is very swampy, and soils are mostly peaty histosols and, in the treeless northern part, histels . In the south of the plain, where permafrost is largely absent, rich grasslands that are an extension of the Kazakh Steppe formed the original vegetation, most of which
2726-563: The Permian–Triassic extinction event . The volcanic event is one of the largest known volcanic eruptions in Earth's history . Only the extreme northwest was glaciated during the Quaternary , but almost all is under exceptionally deep permafrost, and the only tree that can thrive, despite the warm summers, is the deciduous Siberian Larch ( Larix sibirica ) with its very shallow roots. Outside
2820-526: The Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) , is the largest republic of Russia , located in the Russian Far East , along the Arctic Ocean , with a population of one million. Sakha comprises half of the area of its governing Far Eastern Federal District , and is the world's largest country subdivision , covering over 3,083,523 square kilometers (1,190,555 sq mi). Yakutsk , which is the world's coldest major city,
2914-477: The Russian Orthodox Church and required to take Orthodox Christian names, but in practice generally continued to follow traditional religions. During the Soviet era, most or all of the shamans died without successors. In the 1990s, a neopagan shamanist movement called aiyy yeurekhé was founded by the controversial journalist Ivan Ukhkhan and a philologist calling himself Téris. This group and others cooperated to build
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3008-498: The Soviet period. This was also the beginning of geological prospecting, mining , and local lead production. The first steam-powered ships and barges arrived. Sakha's remoteness, compared to the rest of Siberia, made it a place of exile of choice for both Tsarist and Communist governments of Russia. Among the famous Tsarist-era exiles were the democratic writer Nikolay Chernyshevsky ; Doukhobors , conscientious objectors whose story
3102-621: The Soviet Union (especially in the 1930s and 1940s), the government used the Gulag state agency to administer a system of penal labour camps , replacing the previous katorga system. According to semi-official Soviet estimates, which did not become public until after the fall of the Soviet government in 1991, from 1929 to 1953 more than 14 million people passed through these camps and prisons, many of them in Siberia. Another seven to eight million people were internally deported to remote areas of
3196-579: The Taymyr Peninsula are believed to have been the last places on Earth to support woolly mammoths as isolated populations until their extinction around 2000 BC. At least three species of humans lived in southern Siberia around 40,000 years ago: H. sapiens , H. neanderthalensis , and the Denisovans . In 2010, DNA evidence identified the last as a separate species. Late Paleolithic southern Siberians appear to be related to Paleolithic Europeans and
3290-560: The Urals , which had been known of since the 11th century or earlier, while the name Siberia is first mentioned in Russian chronicles at the start of the 15th century in connection with the death of the khan Tokhtamysh , in "the Siberian land". Some sources say that "Siberia" originates from the Siberian Tatar word for 'sleeping land' ( Sib-ir ). A different hypothesis claims that the region
3384-514: The Yakuts , Tuvans , Altai , and Khakas , are Indigenous —along with the Mongolic Buryats , ethnic Koreans , and smaller groups of Samoyedic and Tungusic peoples (several of whom are classified as Indigenous small-numbered peoples by the Russian government), among many others. The origin of the name is uncertain. The Russian name Yugra was applied to the northern lands east of
3478-426: The 16th century has led to perceptions of the region as culturally and ethnically European. Over 85% of its population are of European descent , chiefly Russian (comprising the Siberian sub-ethnic group), and Eastern Slavic cultural influences predominate throughout the region. Nevertheless, there exist sizable ethnic minorities of Asian lineage, including various Turkic communities—many of which, such as
3572-554: The 2021 census, 95% of Yakuts, 72% of Evenks and 60% of Evens declared Sakha as their native language. The Sakha language is a member of the Turkic language family, belonging to the Siberian branch. It is closely related to the Dolgan language of the former Taymyr Dolgano-Nenets Autonomous Okrug . The Sakha Republic is also home to many of the world's speakers of Tungusic languages , primarily of Evenki and Even . Additionally, Chukchi and
3666-477: The 20th century. In an administrative reform of 1782, Irkutsk Governorate was created. In 1805, Yakutsk Oblast was split from Irkutsk Governorate. Yakutsk Oblast in the early 19th century marked the easternmost territory of the Russian Empire, including such Far Eastern (Pacific) territories as were acquired, known as Okhotsk Okrug within Yakutsk Oblast. With the formation of Primorskaya Oblast in 1856,
3760-805: The Americas. During past millennia, different groups of nomads – such as the Enets , the Nenets , the Huns , the Xiongnu , the Scythians , and the Yugur – inhabited various parts of Siberia. The Afanasievo and Tashtyk cultures of the Yenisey valley and Altay Mountains are associated with the Indo-European migrations across Eurasia. The proto-Mongol Khitan people also occupied parts of
3854-1093: The Markovo Oil Field in 1962 with the Markovo—1 well, which produced from the Early Cambrian Osa Horizon bar - sandstone at a depth of 2,156 metres (7,073 ft). The Sredne-Botuobin Gas Field was discovered in 1970, producing from the Osa and the Proterozoic Parfenovo Horizon. The Yaraktin Oil Field was discovered in 1971, producing from the Vendian Yaraktin Horizon at depths of up to 1,750 metres (5,740 ft), which lies below Permian to Lower Jurassic basalt traps . The climate of Siberia varies dramatically, but it typically has warm but short summers and long, brutally cold winters. On
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3948-688: The North-East Camps ) along the Kolyma and Norillag near Norilsk , where 69,000 prisoners lived in 1952. Major industrial cities of Northern Siberia, such as Norilsk and Magadan , developed from camps built by prisoners and run by former prisoners. Siberia spans an area of 13.1 million square kilometres (5,100,000 sq mi), covering the vast majority of Russia's total territory, and almost 9% of Earth's land surface (148,940,000 km , 57,510,000 sq mi). It geographically falls in Asia, but
4042-566: The Northern Hemisphere, are covered by ice for 9–10 months of the year. New Siberian Islands are a part of the republic's territory. After Nunavut was separated from Canada's Northwest Territories in 1999, Sakha became the largest subnational entity ( statoid ) in the world, with an area of 3,083,523 square kilometers (1,190,555 sq mi), slightly smaller than the territory of India (3.3 million km ), but still slightly larger than Argentina . Sakha can be divided into three great vegetation belts. About 40% of Sakha lies above
4136-423: The Pacific coast, not the watershed, is the eastern boundary (thus including the whole Russian Far East), as well as all Northern Kazakhstan is its subregion in the south-west or a somewhat narrower one that limits Siberia to the Siberian Federal District (thus excluding all subjects of other districts). In Russian, 'Siberia' is commonly used as a substitute for the name of the federal district by those who live in
4230-444: The Russian Far East, and even Petropavlovsk in Kazakhstan and Harbin in China. Novosibirsk is the largest by population and the most important city for the Siberian economy; with an extra boost since 2000 when it was designated a regional center for the executive bureaucracy ( Siberian Federal District ). Omsk is a historic and currently the second largest city in the region, and since 1950s hosting Russia's largest oil refinery,
4324-412: The Russian territories of the Pacific were detached from Sakha. The Russians established agriculture in the Lena River basin. The members of religious groups who were exiled to Sakha in the second half of the 19th century began to grow wheat , oats , and potatoes . The fur trade established a cash economy. Industry and transport began to develop at the end of the 19th century and in the beginning of
4418-412: The Sakha by the 17th century. The Tsardom of Russia began its conquest of the region in the 17th century, moving east after the defeat of the Khanate of Sibir . Tygyn , a king of the Khangalassky Sakha, granted territory for Russian settlement in return for a military pact that included war against indigenous rebels of all North Eastern Asia ( Magadan , Chukotka , Kamchatka and Sakhalin ). Kull,
4512-400: The Siberian Khanate in the 16th century. First, groups of traders and Cossacks began to enter the area. The Russian army was directed to establish forts farther and farther east to protect new Russian settlers who migrated from Europe. Towns such as Mangazeya , Tara , Yeniseysk , and Tobolsk developed, the last becoming the de facto capital of Siberia from 1590. At this time, Sibir was
4606-462: The Soviet Union (including entire nationalities or ethnicities in several cases). Half a million (516,841) prisoners died in camps from 1941 to 1943 during World War II . At other periods, mortality was comparatively lower. The size, scope, and scale of the Gulag slave-labour camps remain subjects of much research and debate. Many Gulag camps operated in extremely remote areas of northeastern Siberia. The best-known clusters included Sevvostlag (
4700-499: The ages. Historically, Siberia was defined as the whole part of Russia and North Kazakhstan to the east of Ural Mountains , including the Russian Far East . According to this definition, Siberia extended eastward from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific coast, and southward from the Arctic Ocean to the border of Central Asia and the national borders of both Mongolia and China. Soviet-era sources ( Great Soviet Encyclopedia and others) and modern Russian ones usually define Siberia as
4794-489: The area as early as the 9th century or as late as the 16th century, though most likely there were several migrations. They migrated up north from around Lake Baikal to the middle Lena due to pressure by the Buryats, a Mongolic group. The Sakha displaced earlier, much smaller populations who lived on hunting and reindeer herding, introducing the pastoralist economy of Central Asia. The indigenous populations of Paleosiberian and Tungusic stock were mostly assimilated to
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#17329141056104888-448: The area as the Yakutsk Oblast into the Tsardom of Russia in the early-mid 17th century, obliging the indigenous peoples of the area to pay fur tribute . While the initial period following the Russian conquest saw the Sakha population drop by 70%, the Imperial period also saw the expansion of the native Yakuts from the middle Lena along the Vilyuy River to the north and the east displacing other indigenous groups. Yakutia saw some of
4982-407: The area between the Laptev Sea and East Siberian Sea . Since 1988, experimentation at Pleistocene Park has proposed to restore the grasslands of prehistoric times by conducting research on the effects of large herbivores on permafrost, suggesting that animals, rather than climate, maintained the past ecosystem. The nature reserve park also conducts climatic research on the changes expected from
5076-413: The atmosphere. Methane is a greenhouse gas 22 times more powerful than carbon dioxide . In 2008 a research expedition for the American Geophysical Union detected levels of methane up to 100 times above normal in the atmosphere above the Siberian Arctic , likely the result of methane clathrates being released through holes in a frozen "lid" of seabed permafrost around the outfall of the Lena and
5170-456: The central one is officially referred to as " Siberian "; the other two are the Ural and Far Eastern federal districts, named for the Ural and Russian Far East regions that correspond respectively to the western and eastern thirds of Siberia in the broader sense. Siberia is known for its long, harsh winters, with a January average of −25 °C (−13 °F). Although it is geographically in Asia, Russian sovereignty and colonization since
5264-406: The centuries-long conquest of Siberia , which began with the fall of the Khanate of Sibir in the late 16th century and concluded with the annexation of Chukotka in 1778. Siberia is vast and sparsely populated, covering an area of over 13.1 million square kilometres (5,100,000 sq mi), but home to roughly a quarter of Russia's population. Novosibirsk , Krasnoyarsk , and Omsk are
5358-458: The coldest inhabited point in the Northern hemisphere. Each town also frequently reaches 30 °C (86 °F) in the summer, giving them, and much of the rest of Russian Siberia, the world's greatest temperature variation between summer's highs and winter's lows, often well over 94–100+ °C (169–180+ °F) between the seasons. Southwesterly winds bring warm air from Central Asia and the Middle East. The climate in West Siberia (Omsk, or Novosibirsk)
5452-491: The continent of Siberia/Angaraland , which fused to Euramerica during the Late Carboniferous , as part of the formation of Pangea . The Siberian Traps were formed by one of the largest-known volcanic events of the last 251 million years of Earth's geological history . Their activity continued for a million years and some scientists consider it a possible cause of the " Great Dying " about 250 million years ago, – estimated to have killed 90% of species existing at
5546-400: The course of development of the Yakut language) as the Evenk and Yukaghir exonyms for the Yakuts. It is pronounced as Haka by the Dolgans , whose language is a close relative of the Yakut language . Sakha stretches to the Henrietta Island in the far north and is washed by the Laptev and Eastern Siberian Seas of the Arctic Ocean. These waters, the coldest and iciest of all seas in
5640-415: The definition of the territory of Siberia a potentially controversial subject. In the eastern extent of Siberia there are territories which are not clearly defined as either Siberia or the Far East , making the question of "what is Siberia?" one with no clear answer, and what is a "Siberian", one of self-identification . The most populous city of Siberia, as well as the third most populous city of Russia,
5734-403: The district itself, but less commonly used to denote the federal district by people residing outside of it. Due to the different interpretations of Siberia, starting from Tyumen , to Chita , the territory generally defined as 'Siberia', some people will define themselves as 'Siberian', while others not. A number of factors in recent years, including the fomenting of Siberian separatism have made
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#17329141056105828-413: The extreme northwest, the taiga is dominant, covering a significant fraction of the entirety of Siberia. Soils here are mainly turbels , giving way to spodosols where the active layer becomes thicker and the ice-content lower. The Lena-Tunguska petroleum province includes the Central Siberian platform (some authors refer to it as the "Eastern Siberian platform"), bounded on the northeast and east by
5922-420: The largest cities in the area. Because Siberia is a geographic and historic concept and not a political entity, there is no single precise definition of its territorial borders. Traditionally, Siberia spans the entire expanse of land from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean , with the Ural River usually forming the southernmost portion of its western boundary, and includes most of the drainage basin of
6016-441: The last battles of the Russian Civil War , and the Bolshevik authorities re-organized Yakutsk Oblast into the autonomous Yakut ASSR in 1922. The Soviet era saw the migration of many Slavs , specifically Russians and Ukrainians , into the area. On 27 September 1990, the area became the Yakutskaya-Sakha Soviet Socialist Republic, and on 27 December 1991, it became the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). The exonym Yakut comes from
6110-410: The lects of the Yukaghir language family are spoken in the northeast. Before the arrival of the Russian Empire, the majority of the local population was Tengrist , similar to the other Turkic people of Central Asia, or in Paleoasian indigenous shamanism with both 'light' (community leading) and 'dark' (healing through spirit journey) shamans. Under the Russians, the local population was converted to
6204-474: The local population, but often met resistance, such as two campaigns in 1187 and 1193 mentioned in chronicles that were defeated. After Novgorod was annexed by Moscow , the newly emerging centralized Russian state also laid claim to the region, with Ivan III of Russia sending expeditionary forces to Siberia in 1483 and 1499–1500. The Russians received tribute, but contact with the tribes ceased after they left. The growing power of Russia began to undermine
6298-478: The mid-17th century, Russia had established areas of control that extended to the Pacific Ocean. Some 230,000 Russians had settled in Siberia by 1709. Siberia became one of the destinations for sending internal exiles . Exile was the main Russian punitive practice with more than 800,000 people exiled during the nineteenth century. The first great modern change in Siberia was the Trans-Siberian Railway , constructed during 1891–1916. It linked Siberia more closely to
6392-553: The most commonly occurring climate in Siberia is continental subarctic (Koppen Dfc , Dwc , or Dsc ), with the annual average temperature about −5 °C (23 °F) and an average for January of −25 °C (−13 °F) and an average for July of +17 °C (63 °F), although this varies considerably, with a July average about 10 °C (50 °F) in the taiga–tundra ecotone . The business -oriented website and blog Business Insider lists Verkhoyansk and Oymyakon , in Siberia's Sakha Republic , as being in competition for
6486-486: The name might be a combination of two words with Turkic origin, su 'water' and bir 'wild land'. Another account sees the name as the ancient tribal ethnonym of the Sihirtia or Sirtya (also Syopyr [sʲɵpᵻr])), a hypothetical Paleo-Asiatic ethnic group assimilated by the Nenets . Mongolist György Kara posits that the toponym Siberia is derived from a Mongolic word sibir , cognate with modern Buryat sheber 'dense forest'. Siberia in Paleozoic times formed
6580-436: The name of a fortress at Qashliq , near Tobolsk. Gerardus Mercator , in a map published in 1595, marks Sibier both as the name of a settlement and of the surrounding territory along a left tributary of the Ob . Other sources contend that the Sibe , an Indigenous Tungusic people , offered fierce resistance to Russian expansion beyond the Urals. Some suggest that the term "Siberia" is a russification of their ethnonym. By
6674-400: The north coast, north of the Arctic Circle , there is a very short (about one month long) summer. Almost all the population lives in the south, along the route of the Trans-Siberian Railway . The climate in this southernmost part is humid continental climate (Köppen Dfa/Dfb or Dwa/Dwb ) with cold winters but fairly warm summers lasting at least four months. The annual average temperature
6768-505: The only kremlin in Siberia), Tomsk (formerly a wealthy merchant's town) and Irkutsk (former seat of Eastern Siberia's governor general, near lake Baikal). Other major cities include: Barnaul , Kemerovo , Krasnoyarsk , Novokuznetsk , Tyumen . Wider definitions of geographic Siberia also include the cities of: Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg in the Urals, Khabarovsk and Vladivostok in
6862-514: The paleolithic Jōmon people of Japan. Ancient DNA analysis has revealed that the oldest fossil known to carry the derived KITLG allele, which is responsible for blond hair in modern Europeans, is a 17,000 year old Ancient North Eurasian specimen from Siberia. Ancient North Eurasian populations genetically similar to Mal'ta–Buret' culture and Afontova Gora were an important genetic contributor to Native Americans, Europeans, Ancient Central Asians, South Asians, and some East Asian groups (such as
6956-404: The population dropping from 240,500 in 1926 down to 236,700 at the 1959 census. Sakha's demographics shifted wildly during the Soviet period as ethnic Russians and Ukrainians, among other groups, settled the area en masse, primarily in Yakutsk and the industrial south. Previously, even Yakutsk had been primarily Sakha and Sakha-speaking. With the end of korenizatsiya , usage of the Sakha language
7050-549: The question. Siberia Siberia ( / s aɪ ˈ b ɪər i ə / sy- BEER -ee-ə ; Russian : Сибирь , romanized : Sibir' , IPA: [sʲɪˈbʲirʲ] ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia , from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states since
7144-465: The rapidly industrialising Russia of Nicholas II ( r. 1894–1917 ). Around seven million Russians moved to Siberia from Europe between 1801 and 1914. Between 1859 and 1917, more than half a million people migrated to the Russian Far East. Siberia has extensive natural resources: during the 20th century, large-scale exploitation of these took place, and industrial towns cropped up throughout
7238-520: The region during the late Pleistocene – early Holocene period. Sakha is the only federal subject of Russia which uses more than one time zone. Sakha spans three time zones. Like the rest of Russia, it does not use daylight saving time . The largest river is the navigable Lena River (4,400 km). As it moves northward, it includes hundreds of small tributaries located in the Verkhoyansk Range . There are over 800,000 lakes in
7332-539: The region. At 7:15 a.m. on 30 June 1908, the Tunguska Event felled millions of trees near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River (Stony Tunguska River) in central Siberia. Most scientists believe this resulted from the air burst of a meteor or a comet. Even though no crater has ever been found, the landscape in the (sparsely inhabited) area still bears the scars of this event. In the early decades of
7426-723: The region. In the 13th century, during the period of the Mongol Empire , the Mongols conquered a large part of this area. With the breakup of the Golden Horde , the autonomous Khanate of Sibir was formed in the late-15th century. Turkic-speaking Yakut migrated north from the Lake Baikal region under pressure from the Mongol tribes from the 13th to 15th centuries. Siberia remained a sparsely populated area. Historian John F. Richards wrote: "it
7520-551: The reintroduction of grazing animals or large herbivores, hypothesizing that a transition from tundra to grassland would lead to a net change in energy emission to absorption ratios. According to Vasily Kryuchkov, approximately 31,000 square kilometers of the Russian Arctic has subjected to severe environmental disturbance. The term "Siberia" has both a long history and wide significance, and association. The understanding, and association of "Siberia" have gradually changed during
7614-562: The republic. Sakha was first home to hunting-gathering and reindeer herding Tungusic and Paleosiberian peoples such as the Evenks and Yukaghir . Migrating from the area around Lake Baikal , the Turkic Sakha people first settled along the middle Lena river sometime between the 9th and 16th centuries, likely in several waves, bringing the pastoral economic system of Central Asia with them. The Russians colonised and incorporated
7708-677: The republic. Major lakes and reservoirs include: Sakha's greatest mountain range, the Verkhoyansk Range , runs parallel and east of the Lena River, forming a great arc that begins in the Sea of Okhotsk and ends in the Laptev Sea. The Chersky Range runs east of the Verkhoyansk Range and has the highest peak in Sakha, Peak Pobeda (3,003 m). The second highest peak is Peak Mus-Khaya reaching 2,959 m. The Stanovoy Range borders Sakha in
7802-439: The rivers. Below the tundra is the vast taiga forest region. Larch trees dominate in the north and stands of fir and pine begin to appear in the south. Taiga forests cover about 47% of Sakha and almost 90% of the cover is larch. The Sakha Republic is the site of Pleistocene Park , a project directed at recreating Pleistocene tundra grasslands by stimulating the growth of grass with the introduction of animals which thrived in
7896-612: The severed yet preserved head of a large wolf from the Pleistocene , dated to over 40,000 years ago, was found close to the Tirekhtyakh River. Ymyakhtakh culture ( c. 2200 –1300 BC) was a Late Neolithic culture of Siberia, with a very large archaeological horizon. Its origins were in Sakha, in the Lena river basin. From there it spread both to the east and to the west. The Turkic Sakha people or Yakuts may have settled
7990-419: The south. The Republic's extensive coastline contains a number of peninsulas; from west to east the most prominent are: From west to east the main islands of Sakha are: Sakha is well endowed with raw materials. The soil contains large reserves of oil , gas, coal , diamonds , gold , silver , tin , tungsten and many others. Sakha produces 99% of all Russian diamonds and over 25% of the diamonds mined in
8084-404: The time. The region has paleontological significance, as it contains bodies of prehistoric animals from the Pleistocene Epoch , preserved in ice or permafrost . Specimens of Goldfuss cave lion cubs , Yuka the mammoth and another woolly mammoth from Oymyakon , a woolly rhinoceros from the Kolyma , and bison and horses from Yukagir have been found. Remote Wrangel Island and
8178-469: The title of the Northern Hemisphere's Pole of Cold . Oymyakon is a village which recorded a temperature of −67.7 °C (−89.9 °F) on 6 February 1933. Verkhoyansk , a town further north and further inland, recorded a temperature of −69.8 °C (−93.6 °F) for three consecutive nights: 5, 6 and 7 February 1933. Each town is alternately considered the Northern Hemisphere's Pole of Cold –
8272-454: The traditionally oral and improvised olonkho , in addition to composing their own works. Many early Sakha leaders, including Oyunsky, died in the Great Purge . Sakha experienced significant collectivization between 1929 and 1934 , with the number of households experiencing collectivization rising from 3.6% in 1929 to 41.7% in 1932. Policies by which the Sakha were harshly affected resulted in
8366-514: The winter, southern Siberia sits near the center of the semi-permanent Siberian High , so winds are usually light in the winter. Precipitation in Siberia is generally low, exceeding 500 millimetres (20 in) only in Kamchatka , where moist winds flow from the Sea of Okhotsk onto high mountains – producing the region's only major glaciers , though volcanic eruptions and low summer temperatures allow only limited forests to grow. Precipitation
8460-665: The world. Sakha is known for its climate extremes, with the Verkhoyansk Range being the coldest area in the Northern Hemisphere. Some of the lowest natural temperatures ever recorded have been here. The Northern Hemisphere 's Pole of Cold is at Verkhoyansk , where the temperatures reached as low as −67.8 °C (−90.0 °F) in 1892 and 1885, and at Oymyakon , where the temperatures reached as low as −67.8 °C (−90.0 °F) in February 1934. Average annual precipitation : 200 mm (central parts) to 700 mm (mountains of Eastern Sakha). Siberia , and particularly Sakha,
8554-426: Was extensively glaciated in the Pleistocene, but the climate was too dry for glaciation to extend to low elevations. At these low elevations are numerous valleys, many of them deep and covered with larch forest, except in the extreme north where the tundra dominates. Soils are mainly turbels (a type of gelisol ). The active layer tends to be less than one metre deep, except near rivers. The highest point in Siberia
8648-548: Was named after the Sibe people . The Polish historian Jan Chyliczkowski has proposed that the name derives from the Proto-Slavic word for 'north' (cf. Russian север sever ), as in Severia . Anatole Baikaloff has dismissed this explanation. He said that the neighboring Chinese, Turks, and Mongolians, who have similar names for the region, would not have known Russian. He suggested that
8742-765: Was restricted in urban areas such as Yakutsk, which became primarily Russian-speaking. In 1992, after the fall of the Soviet Union , Sakha was recognized in Moscow as the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation. Sakha is historically part of Russian Siberia, but since the formation of the Far Eastern Federal District in 2000, it is administratively part of the Russian Far East . Population: 995,686 ( 2021 Census ) ; 958,528 ( 2010 Census ) ; 949,280 ( 2002 Census ) ; 1,081,408 ( 1989 Soviet census ) . Population density
8836-476: Was told to Leo Tolstoy by Vasily Pozdnyakov ; the Socialist Revolutionary Party member and writer Vladimir Zenzinov , who left an account of his Arctic experiences; and Polish socialist activist Wacław Sieroszewski , who pioneered in ethnographic research on the Sakha people. A Sakha national movement first emerged during the 1905 Revolution . A Yakut Union was formed under the leadership of
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