The early history of Siberia was greatly influenced by the sophisticated nomadic civilizations of the Scythians (Pazyryk) on the west of the Ural Mountains and Xiongnu (Noin-Ula) on the east of the Urals, both flourishing before the common era. The steppes of Siberia were occupied by a succession of nomadic peoples, including the Khitan people, various Turkic peoples, and the Mongol Empire. In the Late Middle Ages, Tibetan Buddhism spread into the areas south of Lake Baikal.
During the Russian Empire, Siberia was chiefly developed as an agricultural province. The government also used it as a place of exile, sending Avvakum, Dostoevsky, and the Decemberists, among others, to work camps in the region. During the 19th century, the Trans-Siberian Railway was constructed, supporting industrialization. This was also aided by discovery and exploitation of vast reserves of Siberian mineral resources.
Prehistory and antiquity
According to the field of genetic genealogy, people first resided in Siberia by 45,000 BCE and spread out east and west to populate Europe and the Americas, including the prehistoric Jomon people, who are the ancestors of the modern Japanese and Ainu.
According to Vasily Radlov, among the Paleo-Siberian inhabitants of Central Siberia were the Yeniseians, who spoke a language different from the later Uralic and Turkic people. The Kets are considered the last remainder of this early migration. Migrants are estimated to have crossed the Bering Land Bridge into North America more than 20,000 years ago.
The shores of all Siberian lakes, which filled the depressions during the lacustrine period, abound in remains dating from the Neolithic age. Countless kurgans (tumuli), furnaces, and other archaeological artifacts bear witness to a dense population. Some of the earliest artifacts found in Central Asia derive from Siberia.The New Encyclopædia Britannica, Page 724, by Philip W. Goetz, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc, 1991
The Yeniseians were followed by the Uralic Samoyeds, who came from the northern Ural region. Some descendant cultures, such as the Selkup, remain in the Sayan region. Iron was unknown to them, but they excelled in bronze, silver, and gold work. Their bronze ornaments and implements, often polished, evince considerable artistic taste. They developed and managed irrigation to support their agriculture in wide areas of the fertile tracts.
Indo-Iranian influences in southwestern Siberia can be dated to the 2300–1000 BCE Andronovo culture. Between the 7th and 3rd centuries BCE, the Indo-Iranian Scythians flourished in the Altai region (Pazyryk culture). They were a major influence on all later steppe empires.
As early as the first millennium BCE, trade was underway over the Silk Road. Silk goods were imported and traded in Siberia.
The establishment of the Xiongnu empire in the 3rd century BCE started a series of population movements. Many people were probably driven to the northern borders of the great Central Siberian Plateau. Turkic people such as the Yenisei Kyrgyz had already been present in the Sayan region. Various Turkic tribes such as the Khakas and Uyghurs migrated northwestwards from their former seats and subdued the Ugric people.
These new invaders likewise left numerous traces of their stay, and two different periods may be easily distinguished from their remains. They were acquainted with iron, and learned from their subjects the art of bronze casting, which they used for decorative purposes only. They refined the artistry of this work. Their pottery is more artistic and of a higher quality than that of the Bronze Age. Their ornaments are included among the collections at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.
Middle Ages
Mongol conquest of Southern and Western Siberia
The Mongols had long maintained relations with the people of the Siberian forest (taiga). They called them oin irged ("people of the forest"). Many of them, such as the Barga and Uriankhai, were little different from the Mongols. While the tribes around Lake Baikal were Mongol-speaking, those to the west spoke Turkic, Samoyedic, or Yeniseian languages.
By 1206, Genghis Khan had united all Mongol and Turkic tribes on the Mongolian Plateau and southern Siberia. In 1207, he sent his eldest son Jochi to conquer the Siberian "Forest People", namely the Uriankhai, the Oirats, the Barga, the Khakas, the Buryats, the Tuvans, the Khori-Tumed, Ursut, Qabqanas, Tubas, Kem-Kemjuit, the Yenisei Kyrgyz Khaganate, and others.The Secret History of the Mongols, ch.V He then organized the Siberians into three tumens. Genghis Khan gave the Telengit and Tolos along the Irtysh River to an old companion, Qorchi. While the Barga, Tumed, Buriats, Khori, Keshmiti, and Bashkirs were organized in separate thousands, the Telengit, Tolos, Oirats, and Yenisei Kirghiz were numbered as tumens.C. P. Atwood Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire, p. 502 Genghis created a settlement of ethnic Han craftsmen and farmers at Kem-kemchik after the first phase of the Mongol conquest of the Jin dynasty. The Great Khans favored gyrfalcons, furs, women, and Kyrgyz horses for tribute.
Western Siberia came under the Golden Horde.Nagendra Kr Singh, Nagendra Kumar International Encyclopaedia of Islamic Dynasties, p.271 The descendants of Orda Khan, the eldest son of Jochi, directly ruled the area. In the swamps of western Siberia, dog sled Yam stations were set up to facilitate collection of tribute.
In 1270, Kublai Khan sent an ethnic Han official, with a new batch of settlers, to serve as the judge of the Kyrgyz and Tuvan basin areas (益蘭州 and 謙州).History of Yuan 《 元史 》， Ögedei's grandson Kaidu occupied portions of Central Siberia from 1275 on. The Yuan dynasty army under Kublai's Kipchak general Tutugh reoccupied the Kyrgyz lands in 1293. From then on the Yuan dynasty controlled large portions of Central and Eastern Siberia.C. P. Atwood Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire, p.503
The Yenisei area had a community of weavers of ethnic Han origin. Samarkand and Outer Mongolia both had artisans of Han origin.
Novgorod and Muscovy As early as the 11th century, the Novgorodians had occasionally penetrated into Siberia. In the 14th century, the Novgorodians explored the Kara Sea and the West Siberian river Ob (1364).The Novgorodian Karamzin Annal. The Full Collection of the Russian Annals. Vol.22. St.Petersburg, 2002 After the fall of the Novgorod Republic its communications between Northern Russia and Siberia were inherited by the Grand Duchy of Moscow. On 9 May 1483, the Moscow troops of Princes Feodor Kurbski-Cherny and Ivan Saltyk-Travin moved to West Siberia. The troops moved on the rivers Tavda, Tura, Irtysh, up to the river Ob. In 1499, Muscovites and Novgorodians skied to West Siberia, up to the river Ob, and conquered some local tribes.Каргалов В. Московские воеводы XVI–XVII веков. М.2002
Khanate of Sibir
With the breakup of the Golden Horde late in the 15th century, the Khanate of Sibir was founded with its center at Tyumen. The non-Borjigin Taybughid dynasty vied for rule with the descendants of Shiban, a son of Jochi.
In the beginning of the 16th century, Tatar fugitives from Turkestan subdued the loosely associated tribes inhabiting the lowlands to the east of the Ural Mountains. Agriculturists, tanners, merchants, and mullahs (Muslim clerics) were brought from Turkestan, and small principalities sprang up on the Irtysh and the Ob. Conflicts with the Russians, who were then colonizing the Urals, brought him into collision with Muscovy. Khan Yadegar's envoys came to Moscow in 1555 and consented to a yearly tribute of a thousand sables.
Yermak and the Cossacks
In the mid-16th century, the Tsardom of Russia conquered the Tatar khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan, thus annexing the entire Volga region and making the way to the Ural Mountains open. The colonisation of the new easternmost lands of Russia and further onslaught eastward was led by the rich Stroganov merchant family. Tsar Ivan IV granted large estates near the Urals as well as tax privileges to Anikey Stroganov, who organized large scale migration to these lands. The Stroganovs developed farming, hunting, saltworks, fishing, and ore mining on the Urals and established trade with Siberian tribes.
In the 1570s, the entrepreneur Semyon Stroganov and other sons of Anikey Stroganov enlisted many Cossacks for protection of the Ural settlements against attacks by the Tatars of the Siberian Khanate, led by Khan Kuchum. Stroganov suggested to their chief Yermak, hired in 1577, to conquer the Khanate of Sibir, promising to help him with supplies of food and arms.
In 1581, Yermak began his voyage into the depths of Siberia with a band of 1,636 men, following the Tagil and Tura Rivers. The following year they were on the Tobol, and 500 men successfully laid siege to Qashliq, the residence of Khan Kuchum, near what is now Tobolsk. After a few victories over the khan's army, Yermak's people defeated the main forces of Kuchum on the Irtysh River after the three-day Battle of Chuvash Cape in 1582. The remains of the khan's army retreated to the steppes, abandoning his domains to Yermak, who, according to tradition, by presenting Siberia to Tsar Ivan IV achieved his own restoration to favour.
Kuchum was still strong and suddenly attacked Yermak in 1585 in the dead of night, killing most of his people. Yermak was wounded and tried to swim across the Wagay River (Irtysh's tributary), but drowned under the weight of his own chain mail. Yermak's Cossacks had to withdraw from Siberia completely, but every year new bands of hunters and adventurers, supported by Moscow, poured into the country. Thanks to Yermak's having explored all the main river routes in West Siberia, Russians successfully reclaimed all of Yermak's conquests just several years later.
Russian exploration and settlement
In the early 17th century, the eastward movement of Russian people was slowed by the internal problems in the country during the Time of Troubles. However, very soon the exploration and colonization of the huge territories of Siberia was resumed, led mostly by Cossacks hunting for valuable furs and ivory. While Cossacks came from the Southern Urals, another wave of Russian people came by the Arctic Ocean. These were Pomors from the Russian North, who had already been trading fur with Mangazeya in the north of the Western Siberia for quite a long time. In 1607, the settlement of Turukhansk was founded on the northern Yenisey River, near the mouth of the Lower Tunguska. In 1619, Yeniseysky ostrog was founded on the mid-Yenisey at the mouth of the Upper Tunguska. As the Russian state expanded across Siberia, it welcomed Bukharan merchants from Central Asia to settle in Siberia. Bukharans formed diaspora communities that participated in important trade circulation and served the Russian imperial state in commerce-related and diplomatic roles.Erika Monahan, 'The Merchants of Siberia: Trade in Early Modern Eurasia' (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 2016).