Climate, natural environment and the life support system of the Tungus: cultural and ecological aspects

• Published in: IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science
• Main Author: Ragulina, M V
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: IOP Publishing 2021
• Subjects: Evenks; taiga; Siberia
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/629/1/012053; https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/629/1/012053/pdf; https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/629/1/012053

Abstract The article considers the features of the influence of natural and climatic conditions on life support of the Tungus (Evenks) in the 18th-19th centuries. During the period under review they lived in forest-steppe, taiga and mountain-taiga natural landscapes, surrounded by a sedentary Russian and semi-nomadic Buryat population. The Tungus were distinguished by ensoulment of nature, close vital connection of landscape, worldview and economy. We have drawn on the regularities of climate variability and its influence on the society of Siberia reported in the literature. Then we selected data and analyzed them from the standpoint of historical geography, cultural anthropology and intrasecular climate change. Chronicles on the ice regime of the Angara river in Irkutsk from 1721 to 1921 were used for the reconstruction of climatic fluctuations. During the study period the life support systems of the Tungus was to adapt to the natural and social changing in the context of multiethnic environment of the region. Although the available data have been preserved fragmentarily and do not represent continuous series of information, the content from folklore, chronicles, statistics, archive documents and observations of contemporaries confirm the influence of intrasecular climatic variability on Evenks. The related hunger years, crop failures, epidemics, fluctuations in the volume of biological resources affected all groups of the population. The diversity of neighboring cultures and geographic conditions, as well as their dynamics, contributed to the formation of specifics in the Tungus economy and different rates of their acculturation.