Links to Articles

* The Ewenki Ethnic Minority by China.org.cn

* The Evenks by the Peoples of the Red Book

* Evenki Autonomous District by Scott Polar Research Institute

* Evenki Reindeer Herding: A History by N.V. Ermolova

* Satisfying Your Ancestral Appetite by Catherine Zandonella

* Origin and Affinities of Indigenous Siberian Populations as Revealed by HLA Class II Gene Frequencies by T. S. Uinuk-Ool, et al.

* mtDNA Variation of Aboriginal Siberians Reveals Distinct Genetic Affinities with Native Americans by Antonio Torroni, et al.

* Basal Metabolic Adaptation of the Evenki Reindeer Herders of Central Siberia by V.A. Galloway.

* Nutrition, Thyroid Function and Basal Metabolism of the Evenki of Central Siberia by W. R. Leonard, et al.

* Population Distributions of APOE, APOH, and APOA4 Polymorphisms and Their Relationships with Quantitative Plasma Lipid Levels Among the Evenki Herders of Siberia by M. I. Kamboh, et al.

* The Genetic Legacy of the Mongols by Tatiana Zerjal, et al

* Stratification in the Peopling of China: How Far does the Linguistic Evidence Match Genetics and Archaeology? by Roger Blench

* The Chinese Human Genome Diversity Project by L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza

* Genetic Relationship of Populations in China by J.Y. Chu

* The Reindeer People by NPR

Tungusic Peoples

The term Tungusic peoples is used to describe peoples speaking a Tungusic language. The largest of the Tungusic peoples are the Manchu who are around 10,000,000 in number. They are originally from Northeast China (Manchuria), but since they conquered China in the 1600s, and especially during the 1900s, they have almost totally been assimilated into the main Han Chinese population, though are often still living in northern China.

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Harbin

Creating a Chinese Harbin: Nationalism in an International City, 1916-1932 by James Hugh Carter

The flag of Evenk Autonomous Okrug in the Russian Federation is a horizontal tricolor of light blue, white, and dark blue, all of which stand for the polar days and nights in Northern Siberia. It is charged in the center by a red kumalan, the solar emblem in Evenki culture.

Official Website of Evenkiysky Municipal District (in Russian)

The State Museum of Ethnology in Ulan Ude

capital of the Buryat Autonomous Republic in eastern Siberia

Forest Peoples Project

Photographs of Evenks by ArticPhoto.co.uk

Man, God and Magic by Ivar Lissner

Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia by Piers Vitebsky

Evenks domicile - Evenks home in ethnographic museum in Ulan Ude, Russia.

EVENKI

Excerpts from Wikipedia.org

The Evenks or Evenki (obsolete: Tungus or Tunguz, autonym: Эвэнки, Evenki) are a nomadic Tungusic people of Northern Asia. In Russia, the Evenks (Russian: Эвенки, Evenki; pop. 35,527, 2002 Census), are recognized as one of the Indigenous peoples of the Russian North. In China, the Evenki (鄂温克族; pop. 30,505, as per 2000 Census) form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China.

Evenks of China

According to the 2000 Census, there are 30,505 Evenks in China mainly made up of the Solons and the Khamnigans. 88.8% of China's Evenks live in the Hulunbuir region in the north of the Inner Mongolia Province, near the city of Hailar. The Evenk Autonomous Banner is also located near Hulunbuir. There are also around 3,000 Evenks in neighbouring Heilongjiang Province.

Harbin (哈爾濱) Kharbin) is a sub-provincial city and the capital of the Heilongjiang Province in Northeast China. It lies on the southern bank of the Songhua River. Harbin is ranked as the tenth largest city in China, serving as a key political, economic, scientific, cultural and communications center of Northeastern China.

Harbin is originally a Manchu word meaning 'a place for drying fishing nets.

In 1763, the Qing government moved 500 Solon Evenk and 500 Daur families to the Tacheng and Kuldja areas of Xinjiang, in order to strengthen the empire's western border. 1020 Xibe families (some 4000 persons) followed the next year. Since then, however, the Solons of Xinjiang have assimilated into other ethnic groups, and are not identified as such anymore.

Evenks of Russia

The Evenks were formerly known as tungus. This designation was spread by the Russians, who acquired it from the Yakuts and the Siberian Tatars in the 17th century. The Evenks have several self-designations of which the best known is even, evenk. This became the official designation for the people in 1931. Some groups call themselves orochen ('an inhabitant of the River Oro'), orochon ('a rearer of reindeer'), ile ('a human being'), etc. At one time or another tribal designations and place-names have also been used as self-designations, for instance manjagir, birachen, solon, etc. Several of these have even been taken for separate ethnic entities.

Besides Evenks, the list of indigenous ethnic groups of Siberia includes similarly named Evens (formerly known as Lamuts). Although related to the Evenks, the Evens are now considered to be a separate ethnic group.

The Evenks are spread over a huge territory of the Siberian taiga from the River Ob in the west to the Okhotsk Sea in the east, and from the Arctic Ocean in the north to Manchuria and Sakhalin in the south. The total area of their habitat is about 2,500,000 km². In all of Russia only the Russians inhabit a larger territory. According to the administrative structure, the Evenks live, from west to east, in Tyumen and Tomsk Oblasts, Krasnoyarsk Krai with Evenk Autonomous Okrug, Irkutsk, Chita, and Amur Oblasts, the Buryat and the Sakha Republics, Khabarovsk Krai, and Sakhalin Oblast. However, the territory where they are a titular nation is confined solely to Evenk Autonomous Okrug, where 3,802 of the 35,527 Evenks live (according to the 2002 Census). More than 18,200 Evenks live in the Sakha Republic.

Anthropologically the Evenk belong to the Baikal or Paleo-Siberian group of the Mongolian type, originating from the ancient Paleo-Siberian people of the Yenisei River up to the Okhotsk Sea.

Evenki Language

Evenki language (sometimes incorrectly called Evenk language) is the largest member of the northern group of Tungusic languages (or Manchu-Tungusic languages or Manchu-Tunguz languages).

It is spoken by Evenks in Russia, Mongolia, and People's Republic of China. According to the 2002 Russian Census, it has 7,584 speakers.

The basic vocabulary and inflectional morphemes have almost nothing in common with the Mongolian and the Turkic languages, with which the Tungusic languages are sometimes popularly connected. In certain areas the influences of the Yakut and the Buryat languages are particularly strong. The influence of Russian in general is overwhelming (in 1979, 75.2 % of the Evenkis spoke Russian, rising to 92.7% in 2002). The Evenki language varies considerably among its dialects which are divided into three large groups: the northern, the southern and the eastern dialects. These are further divided into minor dialects. The written language based on the Cyrillic alphabet was created in the late 1920s for Evenkis living in the Soviet Union. In China, Evenki is written in the Mongolian alphabet.

Religion

Prior to contact with the Russians, the religion of the Evenks was shamanism. Although many of them have adopted Lamaism (which is the mainstream form of Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism) the Evenks of both the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China are a nominally Orthodox Christian people. Along with their Even cousins and a few other tribes in Siberia, they are some of the only Asiatic peoples who nominally practice Orthodox Christianity, which they had voluntarily adopted (as opposed to being coerced to do so) during contacts from Russian expansion into Siberia.

Evenk Autonomous Okrug in the Russian Federation

Evenk Autonomous Okrug (Russian: Эвенки́йский автоно́мный о́круг, Evenkiysky avtonomny okrug; Evenki: Эведы Автомоды Округ, Evedy avtomody okrug), or Evenkia, was a federal subject of Russia (an autonomous okrug of Krasnoyarsk Krai). Its administrative center was Tura. As of 2006, at 767,600 km², it was Russia's seventh largest administrative division, and the country's least populous (17,697 as of the 2002 Census).

Following a referendum on the issue held on April 17, 2005, Evenk and Taymyr Autonomous Okrugs were merged into Krasnoyarsk Krai effective January 1, 2007. Administratively, they are now considered to be units with special status within Krasnoyarsk Krai; municipally, they have a status of municipal districts.

Boris Zolotaryov was the last governor of the autonomous okrug.

Map of Hulunbuir within Inner Mongolia

Map of Heilongjiang

Indigeneous People of Siberia

"Ural-Altaic"
- "Uralic-Yukaghir"
  - Uralic
    - Permic (about 1 million speakers)
    - Samoyedic (some 70,000 speakers)
    - Ugric (some 15,000 speakers)
  - Yukaghir (nearly extinct)
- "Altaic"
  - Turkic
    - Yakuts (some 440,000 speakers)
    - Tuvans (some 220,000 speakers)
    - Khakas (some 80,000 speakers)
    - Altay (some 70,000 speakers)
  - Mongolic (some 400,000 speakers)
  - Tungusic (some 80,000 speakers)
Chukotko-Kamchatkan (some 25,000 speakers)
Nivkh (some 5,000 speakers)
Eskimo-Aleut (some 2,000 speakers)
Ket (some 1,400 speakers)

History of Siberia

The History of Siberia may be traced to the sophisticated nomadic civilizations of the Scythians (Pazyryk) and the Xiongnu (Noin-Ula), both flourishing before the Christian era. The steppes of South Siberia saw a succession of nomadic empires, including the Turkic Empire and the Mongol Empire. In the late Middle Ages, the Lamaist Buddhism spread into the areas south of Lake Baikal. A milestone in the history of the region was the arrival of Russians in the 16th and 17th centuries, contemporaneous and in many regards analogous to the European settlement in the Americas. During the imperial period of Russian history, Siberia was an agricultural province and served as a place of exile for Avvakum, Dostoevsky, and the Decembrists, among others. The 19th century witnessed the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, the industrialization and the discovery of vast reserves of Siberian mineral resources.

Pre-History: According to the field of genetic genealogy, people first resided in Siberia by 45000 BP and spread out east and west to populate the Americas and Europe.

The shores of all Siberian lakes which filled the depressions during the Lacustrine period abound in remains dating from the Neolithic age. Countless kurgans (tumuli), furnaces, and other artifacts bear witness to a dense population. In fact some of the earliest artifacts found in Central Asia derive from Siberia and western Turkistan During the great migrations in Asia from east to west, many populations were probably driven to the northern borders of the great Central Siberian Plateau and thence compelled to descend into Siberia. Succeeding waves of immigration forced them still farther towards the barren grounds of the north. As early as first millennium BC silk goods began turning up in Siberia having traveled over the North China Silk Road including the Hexi Trail segment.

According to Vasily Radlov, the earliest inhabitants of Siberia were the Yeniseians, who spoke a language different from Ural-Altaic; some traces of them (Yenets or Yeniseians, Sayan-Ostiaks, and Kottes) exist in the areas of Sayan Mountains.

The Yeniseians were followed by the Ugro-Samoyedes, who also came originally from the high plateau and were compelled, probably during the great migration of the Huns in the 3rd century BCE, to cross the Altay and Sayan ranges and to enter Siberia. They are credited with leaving behind the very numerous remains dating from the Bronze Age which are scattered all over southern Siberia. Iron was unknown to them, but they excelled in bronze, silver, and gold work. Their bronze ornaments and implements, often polished, evince considerable artistic taste, and their irrigated fields covered wide areas in the fertile tracts.

Eight centuries later, Turkic peoples such as Khakases and Uyghurs, also compelled to migrate north-westwards from their former seats, subdued the Ugro-Samoyedes. These new invaders likewise left numerous traces of their stay, and two different periods may be easily distinguished in their remains. They were acquainted with iron, and learned from their subjects the art of bronze-casting, which they used for decorative purposes only, and to which they gave a still higher artistic stamp. Their pottery is more artistic and of a higher quality than that of the Bronze period, and their ornaments are accounted included in the collections at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.

This Turkic empire of the Khagases must have lasted until the 13th century, when the Mongols, under Genghis Khan, subdued them and destroyed some of them. By 1206, Chingis conquered all mongol-turkic tribes in Siberia. And his eldest son Jochi subjugated Siberian forest people: Oirats, Baruga, Buryats, Khori-Tumed, Khakhas, Uriankhais and Kyrgyzs in 1207. A decided decline is shown by the graves which have been discovered, until the country reached the low level of population at which it was found by the Russians on their arrival towards the close of the 16th century.

Siberia Khanate is an anachronistic rendering of its actual name Khanate of Sibir, a Tatar khanate in the later Russian Siberia. The Khanate had an ethnically diverse population of Siberian Tatars, Khanty, Mansi, Nenets and Selkup people.

In the beginning of the 16th century Tatar fugitives from Turkestan subdued the loosely associated tribes inhabiting the lowlands to the east of the Urals. Agriculturists, tanners, merchants, and mullahs (priests) were called from Turkestan, and small principalities sprang up on the Irtysh and the Ob. These were united by Khan Yadegar, and conflicts with the Russians, who were then colonising the Urals, brought him into collision with Muscovy. Khan Ediger's envoys came to Moscow in 1555 and consented to a yearly tribute of a thousand sables.

Novgorod and Muscovy: As early as the 11th century the Novgorodians had occasionally penetrated into Siberia. In the 14th century the Novgorodians explored the Kara Sea and the West-Siberian river Ob (1364). After the fall of Novgorod Republic its communications between Northern Russia and Siberia have been inherited by Moscow. On May, 9, 1483 the Moscow troops of princes Feodor Kurbski-Cherny and Ivan Saltyk-Travin moved to West Siberia. The troops moved on the rivers Tavda, Tura, Irtysh up to the river Ob. 1499 Muscovites and Novgorodians skied to West Siberia up to river Ob and subdued some local tribes. In 1570s the entrepreneur Stroganov in Perm enlisted many cossacks for protection of the Urals settlements against attacks of the Siberian Tatars. Stroganov suggested to their chief Yermak to conquer the Siberia Khanate, promising to help him with supplies of food and arms.

Yermak and the Cossacks: Yermak entered Siberia in 1580 with a band of 1,636 men, following the Tagil and Tura Rivers. The following year they were on the Tobol, and 500 men successfully laid siege to Isker, the residence of Khan Kuchum, in the neighbourhood of what is now Tobolsk. Kuchum fled to the steppes, abandoning his domains to Yermak, who, according to tradition, purchased by the present of Siberia to tsar Ivan IV his own restoration to favour.

Yermak drowned in the Irtysh in 1584 and his Cossacks abandoned Siberia. But new bands of hunters and adventurers, supported by Moscow, poured every year into the country. To avoid conflicts with the denser populations of the south, they preferred to advance eastwards along higher latitudes; meanwhile, Moscow erected forts and settled labourers around them to supply the garrisons with food. Within eighty years the Russians had reached the Amur and the Pacific Ocean. This rapid conquest is accounted for by the circumstance that neither Tatars nor Turks were able to offer any serious resistance.

Imperial Russian Expansion: The main treasure to attract Cossacks to Siberia was fur of sables, foxes, and ermines. Explorers brought back many furs from their expeditions. Local people, submitting to Russia, received defense by Cossacs from the southern nomads. In exchange they were obliged to pay yasak (tax) in form of furs. There was a set of yasachnaya roads, used to transport yasak to Moscow.

A number of peoples showed open resistance to Russians. Others submitted and even requested to be subordinated, though sometimes they later refused to pay yasak, or not admitted the Russian authority. There is evidence of collaboration and assimilation of Russians with the local peoples in Siberia though the more they advanced to the East, the less local people were developed and the more resistance they offered. The most resistant groups were Koryak and Chukchi (in Chukchi Peninsula), the latter still being at the Stone Age level of development

In 1607–1610, the Tungus fought strenuously for their independence, but were subdued around 1623. In 1628, the Russians reached the Lena, founded the fort of Yakutsk in 1637, and two years later reached the Sea of Okhotsk at the mouth of the Ulya River. The Buryats offered some opposition, but between 1631 and 1641 the Cossacks erected several palisaded forts in their territory, and in 1648 the fort on the upper Uda River beyond Lake Baikal. In 1643, Vassili Poyarkov's boats descended the Amur, returning to Yakutsk by the Sea of Okhotsk and the Aldan River, and in 1649–1650 Yerofey Khabarov established the fort of Albazin on the bank of the Amur.

The Manchu resistance, however, obliged the Cossacks to quit Albazin, and by the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689) Russia abandoned her advance into the basin of the river, instead concentrating on the colonisation of the vast expanses of Siberia and trading with China via the Siberian trakt. In 1852 a Russian military expedition under Nikolay Muravyov explored the Amur, and by 1857 a chain of Russian Cossacks and peasants were settled along the whole course of the river. The accomplished fact was recognised by China in 1860 by the Treaty of Aigun.

In the same year in which Khabarov explored the Amur (1648), the Cossack Semyon Dezhnev sailed from the Kolyma River around the north-eastern extremity of Asia through the strait which was rediscovered and described eighty years later by Bering. James Cook in 1778, and La Pérouse after him, settled definitively the broad features of the northern Pacific coast.

Although the Arctic Ocean had been reached as early as the first half of the 17th century, the exploration of its coasts by a series of expeditions under Dmitry Ovtsyn, Fyodor Minin, Vasili Pronchishchev, Lasinius, and Laptev—whose labours constitute a brilliant page in the annals of geographical discovery—was begun only in the 18th century (1735–1739).

Pazyryk

The Pazyryk is the name of an ancient nomadic people who lived in the Altai Mountains lying in Siberian Russia south of the modern city of Novosibirsk, near the borders of China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. In this part of the Ukok Plateau, many ancient Bronze Age barrow-like tomb mounds of larch logs covered over by large cairns of boulders and stones have been found. These spectacular burials of the Pazyryk culture closely resemble those of the Scythian people to the west. The term kurgan, a word of Turkic origin, is generally used to describe such log-barrow burials. This archaeological site on the Ukok Plateau is included in the Golden Mountains of Altai UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Pazyryks were horse-riding pastoral nomads of the steppe and some may have accumulated great wealth through horse-trading with merchants in Persia, India and China.

The first tombs were excavated by the archaeologist Sergei Ivanovich Rudenko beginning in the 1920s. While many of the tombs had already been looted in earlier times, Rudenko unearthed buried horses, and with them immaculately preserved cloth saddles, felt and woolen rugs including the world's oldest pile carpet, a 3-metre-high four-wheel funeral chariot from the 5th century BC and other splendid objects that had escaped the ravages of time. These finds are now exhibited at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.

Pazyryk Chief: Rudenko's most striking discovery was the body of a tattooed Pazyryk chief: a thick-set, powerfully built man who had died when he was about 50. Parts of the body had deteriorated, but much of the tattooing was still clearly visible (see image). Subsequent investigation using reflected infrared photography revealed that all five bodies discovered in the Pazyryk kurgans were tattooed. No instruments specifically designed for tattooing were found, but the Pazyryks had extremely fine needles with which they did miniature embroidery, and these were probably used for tattooing.

The chief was elaborately decorated with an interlocking series of designs representing a variety of fantastic beasts. The best preserved tattoos were images of a donkey, a mountain ram, two highly stylized deer with long antlers and an imaginary carnivore on the right arm. Two monsters resembling griffins decorate the chest, and on the left arm are three partially obliterated images which seem to represent two deer and a mountain goat. On the front of the right leg a fish extends from the foot to the knee. A monster crawls over the right foot, and on the inside of the shin is a series of four running rams which touch each other to form a single design. The left leg also bears tattoos, but these designs could not be clearly distinguished. In addition, the chief's back is tattooed with a series of small circles in line with the vertebral column. This tattooing was probably done for therapeutic reasons. Contemporary Siberian tribesmen still practice tattooing of this kind to relieve back pain.

Ice Maiden: The most famous undisturbed Pazyryk burial so far recovered is the "Ice Maiden" found by archaeologist Natalia Polosmak in 1993, a rare example of a single woman given a full ceremonial wooden chamber-tomb in the 5th century BC, accompanied by six horses. It had been buried over 2,400 years ago in a casket fashioned from the hollowed-out trunk of a larch tree. On the outside of the casket were stylized images of deer and snow leopards carved in leather. Shortly after burial the grave had apparently been flooded by freezing rain and the entire contents of the burial chamber had remained frozen in permafrost. Six horses wearing elaborate harnesses had been sacrificed and lay on the logs which formed the roof of the burial chamber. The maiden's well-preserved body, carefully embalmed with peat and bark, was arranged to lie on her side as if asleep. She was young; her hair was still blonde; she had been 5 feet 6 inches tall. Even the animal style tattoos were preserved on her pale skin: creatures with horns that develop into flowered forms. Her coffin was made large enough to accommodate the high felt headdress she was wearing, which had 15 gilded wooden birds sewn to it. On a gold buckle retrieved from another tomb, a similar woman's headdress intertwined with branches of the tree of life are depicted. Her blouse was originally thought to be made of wild "tussah" silk but closer examination of the fibers indicate the material is not Chinese but came from somewhere else, perhaps India. She was clad in a long crimson woolen skirt and white felt stockings. Near her coffin was a vessel made of yak horn, and dishes containing gifts of coriander seeds: all of which suggest that the Pazyryk trade routes stretched across vast areas of Asia. Similar dishes in other tombs was thought to have held Cannabis sativa, confirming a practice described by Herodotus but after tests the mixture was found to be coriander seeds, probably used to disguise the smell of the body.

Two years after the discovery of the "Ice Maiden" Dr. Polosmak's husband, Vyacheslav Molodin, found a frozen man, elaborately tattooed with an elk, with two long braids that reached to his waist, buried with his weapons.

Other Findings: Other undisturbed kurgans have been found to contain remarkably well-preserved remains, comparable to the earlier Tarim mummies of Xinjiang. Bodies were preserved using mummification techniques and were also naturally frozen in solid ice from water seeping into the tombs. They were encased in coffins made from hollowed trunks of larch (which may have had sacral significance) and sometimes accompanied by sacrificed concubines and horses. The clustering of tombs in a single area implies that it had particular ritual significance for these people, who were likely to have been willing to transport their deceased leaders great distances for burial.

As recently as January 2007, tombs are still discovered at various locations, such as the timber tomb of a blond chieftain warrior that was unearthed in the permafrost of the Altai mountains region close to the Mongolian border. The body of the presumed Pazyryk chieftain is tattooed; his sable coat is well-preserved, as are some other objects, including what looks like scissors. A local archaeologist, Aleksei Tishkin, complained that the indigenous population of the region strongly disapproves of archaeological digs, prompting the scientists to move their activities across the border to Mongolia.

Nomadic Culture: Rudenko initially assigned the neutral label Pazyryk culture for these nomads and dated them to the 5th century BC. The Pazyryk culture has since been connected to the Scythians whose similar tombs have been found across the steppes. The Siberian animal style tattooing is characteristic of the Scythians. Trading routes between Central Asia, China and the Near East passed through the oases on the plateau and these ancient Altai nomads profited from the rich trade and culture passing through. There is evidence that Pazyryk trade routes were vast and connected with large areas of Asia including India, perhaps Pazyryk merchants largely trading in high quality horses.

It has been suggested that Pazyryk was a homeland for these tribes before they migrated west. There is also the possibility that the current inhabitants of the Altai region are descendants of the Pazyryk culture, a continuity that would accord with current ethnic politics: DNA is now being used to study the Pazyryk mummies.

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