Mid week we had a chance to get out of the conference room and take an excursion. We toured an open air museum which traced the early days of Russian settlement in Siberia. We also visited the jewel of Sibera, Lake Baikal and got our feet wet.
Evenki food box. A migrating group of nomads would leave food in a box such as this for the next group coming through. The height is to keep it away from bears.
This is a shelter made by Evenkis for a boat. The boat was made from a single log.
The Evenki are the mostly widely scattered of Siberian peoples. They were once a much larger people that were encroached upon by the Sakha (Yakut) and Buryat. The Evenki in different parts have a varied culture. In many parts they used reindeer skins to make their chums. In the Baikal area they made bark chums in the Summer time.
This contraption was used by the Evenki for two purposes- smoking fish and tanning hides.
Siberian peoples would not dig the ground, so this is an Evenki burial site.
The Evenki in the Baikal area had a syncretistic form of Orthodoxy as is evident in this burial site.
Early fort settlements in Siberia remind me greatly of early fort settlements during the Hudson Bay Company era in Canada. This was in many ways quite similar to Fort Carlton in Saskatchewan. There were other buildings that reminded me of Batoche in Saskathchewan. The Siberian settlements and Canadian settlements are from the same period, during the 1600s.
Inside a Buryat yurt.
The famous Lake Baikal. It is the deepest lake in the world at 1637 metres. It holds one fifth of the world's fresh water. The lake is so deep because it is a geological splitting of the continent. It is surrounded by mountains. There are many rivers that flow into to Baikal, but only one that flows out. Around 50 000 years ago a large earthquake knocked over a mountain, as a result a river "fell out" of the lake. Today this is the River Angara.
Getting our feet wet in Lake Baikal
Traditional Russian style swing, oh yeah!
2 comments:
Thank you so much for sharing the pictures and the info from such a far-flung place. The birch forest looks just beautiful and of course, the spectacularly alluring Lake Baikal. I went to an outdoor museum in Estonia that may be similar to the one you went to. A little glimpse into another world.
Awesome!
They built a lot of stuff, as creative as anyone else out there.
Thanks for posting it! They thought about other groups who would follow them... most interesting and generous. Excellent 'normal' behaviour when those lodges where utilised.
(Our office has had good fun watching your swing.)
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