The cultivation in western siberia before the advent of the russians

Abstract

In Western Siberia it was in the late Palaeolithic Age that men came to liver for the first time (Cf. Fig. 1). They enlarged their dwelling. area as far as the lower Ob River in the Neolithic Age (Cf. Fig. 2). The first farming of Western Siberia was begun in the southern part of it at the Andronovskaya epoch (1700—1200 B.C.). The northenmost bounds of agriculture in the end of the Bronze Age were along the line of Kurgan, Petropavlovsk and Omsk. In other words, they were in the southern part of the forest steppe zone. In the part of the Minusinsk Basin, irrigation-farming was begun at the Tagarskaya epoch (700—100 B.C.). About the fifth century, they started to till the fields with plough under the influence of China. S.V. Kiselev states that hack-tilling with irrigation played the main role in the rise of the Türk people in the Altay in the sixth century and that plough-tilling with irrigation came to have an important meaning in the rise of the Kyrgys people in the upper Yenisey River in the tenth century. The agriculture in Southern Siberia, which had developed comparatively highly in the ancient time, fell into decay in the latter period. © 1957, The Human Geographical Society of Japan. All rights reserved.