The Sayan Mountains' towering peaks and cool lakes southwest ofTuva give rise to thetributaries that merge to become one of Siberia's major rivers, theYenisei River, which flows north over 3,400 kilometres (2000 mi) to theArctic Ocean. This is a protected and isolated area, having been kept closed by theSoviet Union since 1944.[3]
Between the breach of the Yenisei andLake Khövsgöl at 100° 30' E. the system bears also the name of Yerghik-Taiga. The flora is on the whole poor, although the higher regions carry good forests oflarch,pine,juniper,birch, andalder, withrhododendrons and species ofBerberis andRibes. Lichens and mosses clothe many of the boulders that are scattered over the upper slopes.[6]
The Eastern Sayan stretches almost at a right angle to the Western Sayan for 1,000 km (620 mi) in a northwest/southeast direction, from the Yenisei to theAngara Range. Some subranges of the northwest form a system of "White Mountains" (Белогорье) or "Belki", such as Manskoye Belogorye, Kanskoye Belogorye, Kuturchinskoye Belogorye, as well as Agul Belki (Агульские Белки), with permanent snow on the peaks. In the central part, towards the upper reaches of theKazyr andKizir rivers, several ridges, such as the Kryzhin Range form a cluster culminating in the 2,982 m (9,783 ft) highGrandiozny Peak, the highest point in Krasnoyarsk Krai.[citation needed]
To the southeast rise the highest and most remote subranges, including theBolshoy Sayan andKropotkin Range, as well as "Goltsy" type of mountains, such as theTunka Goltsy,Kitoy Goltsy,Botogolsky Goltsy, among others. The highest point of the Eastern Sayan, as well as the highest point of the whole Sayan system, 3,491 m (11,453 ft) high MountMunku-Sardyk, is located in the range of the same name in this area. 2,939 m (9,642 ft) highPik Tofalariya is the highest point ofIrkutsk Oblast. The mountains of the Eastern Sayan characteristically display alpine relief forms. In general, rivers flowing down from the ranges formgorges and there is an abundance of waterfalls in the area.[7][8]
In this area that currently shows only small cirque glaciers, at glacial times glaciers have flowed down from the 3492 m highMunku Sardyk massif situated west of Lake Baikal and from the 12.100 km2 extended completely glaciated granite-gneiss plateau (2300 m asl) of the East-Sayan mountains as well as the east-connected 2600 – 3110 m-high summits in the Tunkinskaya Dolina valley, joining to a c. 30 km-wide parent glacier. Its glacier tongue that flowed down to the east, to Lake Baikal, came to an end at 500 m asl (51°48’28.98"N/103°0’29.86"E). The Khamar Daban mountains were covered by a large-scale ice cap filling up the valley relief.
From its valley heads, e.g. the upper Slujanka valley (51°32’N/103°37’E), but also through parallel valleys like the Snirsdaja valley, outlet glaciers flowed to the north to Lake Baikal. The Snirsdaja-valley-outlet glacier has calved, among other outlet glaciers, at c. 400 m asl into Lake Baikal (51°27’N/104°51’E). The glacial (Würm ice age = Last Glacial Period = MIS 2) glacier snowline (ELA) as altitude limit between glacier feeding area and ablation zone has run in these mountains between 1450 and 1250 m asl. This corresponds to a snowline depression of 1500 m against the current height of the snowline. Under the condition of a comparable precipitation ratio there might result from this a glacial depression of the average annual temperature of 7.5 to 9 °C for the Last Ice Age against today.[9][10]
Autumn forest in the Eastern Sayan Mountains,Buryatia,Russia.
According toSev’yan I. Vainshtein, Sayan reindeer herding, as historically practiced by theEvenks, is "the oldest form of reindeer herding and is associated with the earliest domestication of the reindeer by theSamoyedic taiga population of the Sayan Mountains at the turn of the first millennium A.D."[citation needed]
The Sayan region was apparently the origin of the economic and cultural complex of reindeer hunters-herdsmen that we now see among the various Evenki groups and the peoples of the Sayan area.[citation needed]
The ancestors of modern Evenki groups inhabited areas adjacent to the Sayan Mountains, and it is highly likely that they took part in the process of reindeer domestication along with the Samoyedic population."[11] The local indigenous groups that have retained their traditional lifestyle nowadays live almost exclusively in the area of the Eastern Sayan mountains.[12] However, the local reindeer herding communities were greatly affected byrussification andsovietization, with many Evenks losing their traditional lifestyle and groups like theMator andKamas peoples being assimilated altogether.[13]
According toJuha Janhunen, and other linguists, the homeland of theUralic languages is located in South-Central Siberia in the Sayan Mountains region.[14][failed verification][15] Meanwhile,TurkologistPeter Benjamin Golden locates theProto-Turkic Urheimat in the southerntaiga-steppe zone of the Sayan-Altay region.[16] Alternatively, the Proto-Uralic homeland is located farther westwards (e.g. in theVolga-Kama region[17]) while the Proto-Turkic homeland is located farther eastwards (e.g. "in the southern fringe of the [Northern Eurasian Greenbelt] in Northeast Asia ... near eastern Mongolia").[18]
^Vasily Bartold (1935).Vorlesungen uber die Geschichte der Turken Mittelasiens. Vol. 12. Berlin: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Islamkunde. p. 46.OCLC3673071.
^Grosswald, M. G.; Kuhle, M. (1994):Impact of Glaciations on Lake Baikal. International Project on Paleolimnology and Late Cenozoic Climate No. 8. (Eds: Shoji Horie; Kazuhiro Toyoda (IPPCCE)) Universitätsverlag Wagner, Innsbruck, pp. 48–60.
^Kuhle, M. (2004) : 'The High Glacial (Last Ice Age and LGM) glacier cover in High- and Central Asia. Accompanying text to the mapwork in hand with detailed references to the literature of the underlying empirical investigations'. Ehlers, J., Gibbard, P. L. (eds).Extent and Chronology of Glaciations, Vol. 3 (Latin America, Asia, Africa, Australia, Antarctica). Amsterdam, Elsevier B.V., pp. 175-199.
^Vainshtein, Sev’yan I. (1971), "The Problem of the Origins of Reindeer Herding in Eurasia, Part II: The Role of the Sayan Center in the Diffusion of Reindeer Herding in Eurasia",Sovetskaya Etnografiya,5:37–52
^Forysth, J. (1991). "The Siberian Native Peoples Before and After the Russian Conquest". In Wood, A. (ed.).The History of Siberia: From Russian Conquest to Revolution. London: Routledge. pp. 69–91.ISBN0-415-05873-2.
^Parpola, A. (2013). "Formation of the Indo-European and Uralic language families in the light of archaeology: Revised and integrated 'total' correlations". In R. Grünthal, & P. Kallio (Eds.),Linguistic map of prehistoric north Europe (pp. 119-184). (Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne; Vol. 266). Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura. p. 160
^Uchiyama, J., Gillam, J., Savelyev, A., & Ning, C. (2020). "Populations dynamics in Northern Eurasian forests: A long-term perspective from Northeast Asia",Evolutionary Human Sciences, 2, E16.doi:10.1017/ehs.2020.11
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