Resettlement and Adaptation of Asian Tribes on the Territory of Northern Eurasia

Abstract

The earliest evidence of human presence in the Far North of Asia refers to the Upper Paleolithic, when the climate changes, caused by global warming of the Atlantic climate period, opened for the inhabitants of the southern territories way to the North. The warm period allowed the ancient man to move up to the subarctic zone, but where were the initial migration areas? Science does not yet have unequivocal information, only rare findings allow us to construct some working hypotheses. Our hypothesis is based on possible connections between the modern indigenous population of the North of Eurasia and the peoples of southern China and South-East Asia. It has been established that the Ob-Irtysh anthropological type of the West Siberian race can indeed have roots in Southeast Asia. The ornaments of the North demonstrate clear links with the ethnographical samples from Japan, southern China, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia. The inhabitants of the taiga zone of Northern Asia were primarily hunters, not farmers, so analogies should be sought not in agricultural areas, but in regions with similar type of economy, in the mountains inhabited by small nations, self-isolated for thousands years, who preserved ancient features of their culture. Over the past millenniums, the agricultural civilization gradually erased the traits of hunters and gatherers, but some grains of relict features preserved in the cultures of small nations and they could indicate the objectivity of the ideas about the formation of the Paleo-Asiatic tribes of northern Eurasia in Southeast Asia. Ethnogenesis of Asian peoples of Siberia is an important question that requires serious interdisciplinary archaeological and ethnographic research. At present, the problems of ethnogenesis of Asian peoples of the Far North can be solved only by complex and interdisciplinary methods and on a broad chronological and territorial background. The existing materials allow only formulating the problem and outlining directions for research in the long-term perspective.