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99-407: The area where the glacier flows is remote and uninhabited. This glacier was named Nunatak glacieren in 1899 by Swedish Arctic explorer and geologist A.G. Nathorst during the expedition he led to Greenland in search of survivors of S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897 . The name was chosen owing to the tops of nunataks appearing to overhang it. The Nunatak Glacier originates at

198-664: A map of their journeys to that region, which were published by their descendants in 1558. The Northwest Passage connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans via the Arctic Ocean. Since the discovery of the American continent was the product of the search for a route to Asia, exploration around the northern edge of North America continued for the Northwest Passage. John Cabot 's initial failure in 1497 to find

297-730: A Northwest Passage across the Atlantic led the British to seek an alternative route to the east. Interest re-kindled in 1564 after Jacques Cartier 's discovery of the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River . Martin Frobisher had formed a resolution to undertake the challenge of forging a trade route from England westward to India. From 1576 to 1578, he took three trips to what is now the Canadian Arctic in order to find

396-489: A northern Urals Arctic homeland of the Indo-Aryan and Slavic people. Hindu nationalist Madhavrao Sadashivrao Golwalkar also supported and was inspired by Tilak's idea. In his famous 1939 publication We or Our Nationhood Defined , he stated that "Undoubtedly [...] we – Hindus – have been in undisputed and undisturbed possession of this land for over eight or even ten thousand years before

495-515: A passage westward. Though he was unable to pass through the icy Arctic waters, he reported to his sponsors that the passage they sought is "a matter nothing doubtfull [ sic ]," and secured support for two additional expeditions, reaching as far as Hudson Bay . Though England's efforts were interrupted in 1587 because of the Anglo-Spanish War , Davis's favorable reports on the region and its people would inspire explorers in

594-473: A pragmatic approach of traveling by land on foot and dog sled , and typically employed less than ten people in his exploration parties. The Northwest Passage was not completely conquered by sea until 1906, when the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen , who had sailed just in time to escape creditors seeking to stop the expedition, completed a three-year voyage in the converted 47-ton herring boat Gjøa . At

693-646: 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

792-564: A second time on May 24, 1928. Nobile's second trip was in the airship Italia that ran into a storm on the return trip and crashed on the ice. Survivors were eventually recovered. Amundsen disappeared, with the crew of his sea plane, during the rescue operations. The first people to have without doubt walked on the North Pole were the Soviet party of 1948 under the command of Alexander Kuznetsov, who landed their aircraft nearby and walked to

891-633: A similar voyage in reverse, starting in Kamchatka and going north to the passage that now bears his name (Bering Strait). It was Bering who gave their current names to Diomede Islands , discovered and first described by Dezhnev. It was not until in 1878 that Finnish-Swedish explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld made the first complete passage of the North East Passage from west to east, in the Vega expedition . The ship's captain on this expedition

990-505: 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

1089-424: 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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1188-655: 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

1287-530: 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

1386-425: 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

1485-667: 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

1584-603: 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

1683-473: 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

1782-626: 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

1881-623: 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

1980-524: 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

2079-626: The British Isles . From the local population, he heard news of the mysterious land of Thule , even farther to the north. After six days of sailing, he reached land at the edge of a frozen sea (described by him as " curdled "), and described what is believed to be the aurora and the midnight sun . Some historians claim that this new land of Thule was either the Norwegian coast or the Shetland Islands based on his descriptions and

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2178-530: The Cold War context. On April 19, 1968, Ralph Plaisted reached the North Pole via snowmobile , the first surface traveler known with certainty to have done so. His position was verified independently by a US Air Force meteorological overflight. In 1969 Wally Herbert , on foot and by dog sled, became the first man to reach the North Pole on muscle power alone, on the 60th anniversary of Robert Peary's famous but disputed expedition. The first persons to reach

2277-676: 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

2376-636: 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

2475-573: 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

2574-631: 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

2673-593: 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

2772-631: 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

2871-526: 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

2970-426: 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

3069-664: The 1996 position of the magnetic north pole ( 78°35.7′N 104°11.9′W  /  78.5950°N 104.1983°W  / 78.5950; -104.1983  ( Magnetic North Pole 1996 ) ) in a modified Toyota Hilux . On 2 August 2007, during Arktika 2007 Russian crewed submersibles were the first to descend to the seabed below the pole. On April 26, 2009, Vassily Elagin , Afanassi Makovnev, Vladimir Obikhod, Sergey Larin, Alexey Ushakov, Alexey Shkrabkin and Nikolay Nikulshin after 38 days and over 2,000 km (1,200 mi) (starting from Sredniy Island , Severnaya Zemlya ) drove two Russian built cars "Yemelya-1" and "Yemelya-2" to

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3168-783: The 860's. In the 10th century, Gunnbjörn Ulfsson got lost in a storm and ended up within sight of the Greenland coast. His report spurred Erik the Red , an outlawed chieftain, to establish a settlement there in 985. While they flourished initially, these settlements eventually petered out until about 1450. Initially this abandonment of the colony was credited to the Little Ice Age but that has been disputed by recent studies which suggest there were more complex factors at play. Greenland's early settlers sailed westward, in search of better pasturage and hunting grounds. Modern scholars debate

3267-843: 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

3366-800: The Eurasian continent and stretching between the waters north of the Norwegian Sea to the Bering Strait. The "Northern Sea Route" is defined as a specific portion of such routes. The Northern Sea Route (capitalized) as currently officially defined by Russian Federation law includes shipping lanes falling within Russia's EEZ and extending from the Kara Sea to the Bering Strait along the Russian northern coast. The idea to explore this region

3465-705: The Kola Peninsula, where they eventually died of scurvy . Chancellor and his crew made it to the mouth of the Dvina River and the town of Arkhangelsk, where they were met by a delegation from the Tsar , Ivan the Terrible . Brought back to Moscow , he launched the Muscovy Company , promoting trade between England and Russia. This diplomatic course allowed British Ambassadors such as Sir Francis Cherry

3564-1147: 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

3663-580: The Netherlands, Denmark and Norway, looking for an alternative seaway to China and India. Most notable is the 1596 expedition led by Dutch navigator Willem Barentsz who discovered Spitsbergen and Bear Island . Fearing English and Dutch penetration into Siberia, Russia closed the Mangazeya seaway in 1619. Pomor activity in Northern Asia declined and the bulk of exploration in the 17th century

3762-584: The North Pole in a Fokker F.VIIa/3m Tri-motor monoplane. However, their claim to have reached the Pole is disputed. The crew of the airship Norge (including Roald Amundsen and the American sponsor Lincoln Ellsworth ) flew over the Pole on May 12, 1926. This is the first undisputed sighting of the Pole. Norge was designed and piloted by the Italian Umberto Nobile , who overflew the Pole

3861-442: The North Pole on foot (or skis) and return with no outside help, no dogs, airplanes, or re-supplies were Richard Weber (Canada) and Misha Malakhov (Russia) in 1995. No one has completed this journey since. U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher and Lieutenant William Pershing Benedict landed a plane at the Pole on May 3, 1952, accompanied by the scientist Albert P. Crary . On 2 May 2007, BBC's Top Gear reached

3960-443: The North Pole. 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

4059-534: 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

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4158-433: The Nunatak Glacier, to the west of Jakob Kjøde Bjerg. This Greenland location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Arctic explorer Arctic exploration is the physical exploration of the Arctic region of the Earth . It refers to the historical period during which mankind has explored the region north of the Arctic Circle . Historical records suggest that humankind have explored

4257-423: 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

4356-487: The Pole is disputed). He traveled with the aid of dogsleds and three separate support crews who turned back at successive intervals before reaching the Pole. Many modern explorers, including Olympic skiers using modern equipment, contend that Peary could not have reached the pole on foot in the time he claimed. A number of previous expeditions set out with the intention of reaching the North Pole but did not succeed; that of British naval officer William Edward Parry in 1827,

4455-444: 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,

4554-400: 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

4653-462: 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 (

4752-452: The Vedas (1903), which was dedicated to philologist and indologist Max Müller , with whom Tilak had shared ideas before the book was completed. Austro-Hungarian ethnologist Karl Penka also discussed the same idea in his Origins of the Aryans (1883). Tilak's theory was popularized by Russian nationalists, due to the work of Soviet historian and ethnographer Natalya Romanovna Guseva and Soviet ethnographer S.V Zharnikova, who argued for

4851-499: 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

4950-407: 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

5049-413: 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

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5148-456: 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

5247-406: 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

5346-458: 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)

5445-406: The coming century. In 1609, while in the service of the Dutch East India Company , the English explorer Henry Hudson sailed up what is now called the Hudson River in search of the Passage; he reached present-day Albany, New York , before giving up. He later explored further north into the Arctic and Hudson Bay for the Passage. The Northeast Passage is a broad term for any route lying above

5544-491: 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

5643-415: 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,

5742-403: 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

5841-474: The early 16th century. In 1648 the Cossack Semyon Dezhnyov opened the now famous Bering Strait between America and Asia. Russian settlers and traders on the coasts of the White Sea, the Pomors, had been exploring parts of the northeast passage as early as the 11th century. By the 17th century they established a continuous sea route from Arkhangelsk as far east as the mouth of Yenisey . This route, known as Mangazeya seaway , after its eastern terminus,

5940-403: The eastern end of the Adolf Hoel Glacier , south of the area of the Jakob Kjøde Bjerg nunatak. Strindberg Land lies to the east and the northeastern end of Andrée Land on its western side. It flows in a roughly northwest to southeast direction for about 20 km (12 mi) until its terminus at the head of the Geologfjord . The Eyvind Fjeld Glacier flows beyond the northwestern end of

6039-409: The end of this trip, he walked into the city of Eagle, Alaska , and sent a telegram announcing his success. His route was not commercially practical; in addition to the time taken, some of the waterways were extremely shallow. Knud Rasmussen (1879–1933) led several Arctic expeditions. He grew up in Greenland speaking Greenlandic and Danish , and has been called the "father of Eskimology " and

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6138-413: 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

6237-439: The first attempts to penetrate the Arctic Circle can be traced to ancient Greece and the sailor Pytheas , a contemporary of Aristotle and Alexander the Great , who, in 325 BC, attempted to find the source of the tin that would sporadically reach the Greek colony of Massilia (now Marseille ) on the Mediterranean coast. Sailing past the Pillars of Hercules , he reached Brittany and then Cornwall , eventually circumnavigating

6336-498: The home of the mythical people Hyperboreans in the Arctic. The scientist and author John G. Bennett talked about it in his research paper "The Hyperborean Origin of the Indo-European Culture" (1963). The theory was originally put forth by William F. Warren , the first President of Boston University , in his Paradise Found or the Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole . Later, Indian independence activist Bal Gangadhar Tilak resurrected Warren's theory in his The Arctic Home in

6435-400: The land was invaded by any foreign race." Ancient Greek historian and geographer Herodotus said that the Hyperboreans lived beyond the Massagetae and Issedones . Since these are both Central Asian peoples, one could speculate that his Hyperboreans lived in Siberia . In his twelve labours , Heracles sought the golden-antlered hind of Artemis in Hyperborea. Since the reindeer is

6534-420: 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

6633-474: 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

6732-478: 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

6831-553: 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

6930-486: 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

7029-436: 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

7128-474: 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

7227-410: The northern extremes since 325 BC, when the ancient Greek sailor Pytheas reached a frozen sea while attempting to find a source of the metal tin. Dangerous oceans and poor weather conditions often fetter explorers attempting to reach polar regions , and journeying through these perils by sight, boat, and foot has proven difficult. A controversial hypothesis, often regarded as pseudohistory , sets

7326-514: 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

7425-734: The only deer species of which females bear antlers, this would suggest an arctic or subarctic region. Scholar James D. P. Bolton instead located the Issedones people on the south-western slopes of the Altay mountains , which led his colleague Carl P. Ruck to place Hyperborea beyond the Dzungarian Gate into the northern part of the Xinjiang region, adding that the Hyperboreans were probably Chinese. Some scholars believe that

7524-462: The opportunity to consolidate geographic information developed by Russian merchants into maps for British exploration of the region. Some years later, Steven Borough , the master of Chancellor's ship, made it as far as the Kara Sea , when he was forced to turn back because of icy conditions. Western parts of the passage were simultaneously being explored by Northern European countries like England,

7623-514: 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

7722-569: The passage. Frobisher Bay is named after him. In July 1583, Sir Humphrey Gilbert , who had written a treatise on the discovery of the passage and was a backer of Frobisher's, claimed the territory of Newfoundland for the English crown. In 1585, under the employ of Elizabeth I , the English explorer John Davis entered Cumberland Sound , Baffin Island . Davis rounded Greenland before dividing his four ships into separate expeditions to search for

7821-456: The pole. On August 3, 1958, the American submarine USS  Nautilus  (SSN-571) reached the North Pole without surfacing. It then proceeded to travel under the entire Polar ice cap . On March 17, 1959, the USS ; Skate  (SSN-578) surfaced on the North Pole and dispersed the ashes of explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins . These journeys were part of military explorations stimulated by

7920-660: The precise location of the new lands of Vinland , Markland , and Helluland that they discovered. The Scandinavian peoples also pushed farther north into their own peninsula by land and by sea. As early as 880, the Viking Ohthere of Hålogaland rounded the Scandinavian Peninsula and sailed to the Kola Peninsula and the White Sea . The Pechenga Monastery on the north of Kola Peninsula

8019-473: 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

8118-557: 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

8217-751: 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

8316-558: 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

8415-523: 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

8514-478: 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 –

8613-782: The trade depot of Mangazeya, was an early precursor to the Northern Sea Route. Exploration to the north of the Arctic Circle in the Renaissance was both driven by the rediscovery of the Classics and the national quests for commercial expansion, and hampered by limits in maritime technology , lack of stable food supplies, and insufficient insulation for the crew against extreme cold. A seminal event in Arctic exploration occurred in 1409, when Ptolemy 's Geographia

8712-463: The trade routes of early British sailors. While no one knows exactly how far Pytheas sailed, he may have crossed the Arctic Circle. Nevertheless, his tales were regarded as fantasy by later Greek and Roman authorities, such as the geographer Strabo . Naddodd is said to have encountered Iceland when he lost his route due to harsh conditions when sailing from Norway to the Faroe Islands in

8811-529: The tragic American Polaris expedition under Charles Francis Hall in 1871, the ill-fated Jeannette Expedition commanded by US Navy Lieutenant Commander George W. De Long in 1879, and the Norwegian Fram expedition of Fridtjof Nansen in 1895. American Frederick Cook claimed to have reached the North Pole in 1908, but this has not been widely accepted. On May 9, 1926, Americans Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett claimed to have flown over

8910-511: 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

9009-478: Was Lieutenant Louis Palander of the Swedish Royal Navy. In the first half of the 19th century, parts of the Northwest Passage were explored separately by a number of different expeditions, including those by John Ross , William Edward Parry , James Clark Ross ; and overland expeditions led by John Franklin , George Back , Peter Warren Dease , Thomas Simpson , and John Rae . Sir Robert McClure

9108-610: Was carried out by Siberian Cossacks, sailing from one river mouth to another in their Arctic-worthy kochs . In 1648 the most famous of these expeditions, led by Fedot Alekseev and Semyon Dezhnev , sailed east from the mouth of Kolyma to the Pacific and doubled the Chukchi Peninsula , thus proving that there was no land connection between Asia and North America. Eighty years after Dezhnev, in 1728, another Russian explorer, Danish-born Vitus Bering on Sviatoy Gavriil made

9207-408: Was credited with the discovery of the Northwest Passage by sea in 1851 when he looked across M'Clure Strait from Banks Island and viewed Melville Island . However, the strait was blocked by young ice at this point in the season, and not navigable to ships. The only usable route, linking the entrances of Lancaster Sound and Dolphin and Union Strait was first used by John Rae in 1851. Rae used

9306-486: 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

9405-668: Was founded by Russian monks in 1533; from their base at Kola , the Pomors explored the Barents Region , Spitsbergen , and Novaya Zemlya  – all of which are in the Arctic Circle. They also explored north by boat, discovering the Northern Sea Route , as well as penetrating to the trans- Ural areas of northern Siberia . Pomors founded the settlement of Mangazeya east of the Yamal Peninsula in

9504-404: Was initially economic, and was first put forward by Russian diplomat Dmitry Gerasimov in 1525. The entire route laid in Arctic waters and parts and was usually covered in ice, making it a very perilous journey. In the mid-16th century, John Cabot's son Sebastian helped organize just such an expedition, led by Sir Hugh Willoughby and Richard Chancellor . Willoughby's crew was shipwrecked off

9603-563: 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

9702-491: Was the first Greenlander of Inuit and European descent to cross the Northwest Passage via dog sled . Rasmussen and his friend Peter Freuchen participated in seven Thule Expeditions , named after ultima Thule , and wrote numerous books on their Arctic experiences. On April 6, 1909, Robert Peary claimed to be the first person in recorded history to reach the North Pole (although whether he actually reached

9801-464: Was translated into Latin , thereby introducing the concepts of latitude and longitude into Western Europe . As a result navigators were better able to chart their positions. The Inventio Fortunata , a lost book , describes in a summary written by Jacobus Cnoyen but only found in a letter from Gerardus Mercator , voyages as far as the North Pole. One widely disputed claim is that two brothers from Venice , Niccolo and Antonio Zeno , allegedly made

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