A Yenisei-Ostiak (Ket) man in RussiaDistribution of the Yeniseian languages based on Russian historical data. This likely represents a northward migration of the Yeniseians from their origin in Northern Mongolia.
The Yeniseian people refers either to the modern or ancient Siberian populations speaking Yeniseian languages. Despite evidence pointing to the historical presence of Yeniseian populations throughout Central Siberia and Northern Mongolia, only the Ket and Yugh people survive today. The modern Yeniseians live along the eastern middle stretch of the Yenisei River in Northern Siberia. According to the 2021 census, there were 1,088 Kets and 7 Yugs in Russia.[1]
Based on hydronymic data, the Yeniseians originated from the area around the Sayan Mountains and the southern tip of Lake Baikal. The known historical distribution of the Yeniseians is likely to represent a northward migration, with the modern-day Kets representing the very northernmost expansion of the language family.[2] This migration possibly occurred as a result of the fall of the Xiongnu confederation, which, according to Alexander Vovin, is likely to have had a Yeniseian-speaking compoment among its ruling elite.[3][4] The Jie people, a branch of the Xiongnu who established the Later Zhao state in China, are likely to have spoken a variant of Yeniseian.[5]
With the proposal of the Dené–Yeniseian language family, the Yeniseians have been linked to Native Americans, particularly the Athabaskans. It has been suggested that the Yeniseians represent either a back-migration from the Bering land bridge to Central Siberia, or that early Dene-Yeniseian speakers originated in Central Siberia, with Na-Dene speakers expanding into the Americas while Yeniseian speakers remained in Siberia.[6][7]
^Vajda, Edward G. "The Ket and Other Yeniseian Peoples". Archived from the original on 6 April 2019. Retrieved 29 June 2007.
^Georg, Stefan (January 2003). "THE GRADUAL DISAPPEARANCE OF A EURASIAN LANGUAGE FAMILY". … and Language Maintenance: Theoretical, Practical and ...: 89.
^Beckwith, Christopher I. (16 March 2009). Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-13589-2. Retrieved 30 March 2015
^Vovin, A (1 January 2000). "Did the Xiong-nu speak a Yeniseian language?". Central Asiatic Journal. 44: 87–104.
^Vovin, Alexander; Vajda, Edward J.; Vaissière, Etienne de la (2016). "WHO WERE THE *KJET (羯) AND WHAT LANGUAGE DID THEY SPEAK?". Journal Asiatique. 304 (1): 125–144. doi:10.2143/JA.304.1.3146838.
^Sicoli, Mark A.; Holton, Gary (12 March 2014). "Linguistic Phylogenies Support Back-Migration from Beringia to Asia". PLOS ONE. 9 (3): e91722. Bibcode:2014PLoSO...991722S. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0091722. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 3951421. PMID 24621925.
^Wilson, Joseph A. P. (2023). "Late Holocene Technology Words in Proto-Athabaskan: Implications for Dene-Yeniseian Culture History". Humans. 3 (3): 177–192. doi:10.3390/humans3030015. ISSN 2673-9461.
The Yeniseianpeople refers either to the modern or ancient Siberian populations speaking Yeniseian languages. Despite evidence pointing to the historical...
by the Yeniseianpeople in the Yenisei River region of central Siberia. As part of the proposed Dené–Yeniseian language family, the Yeniseian languages...
Yugh people (pronounced [ɟuk]; often written Yug) are a critically endangered Yeniseianpeople, an indigenous group who originally lived throughout central...
Kets (Russian: кеты; Ket: кето, кет, денг) are a Yeniseian-speaking people in Siberia. During the Russian Empire, they were known as Ostyaks, without...
ruling elite of the Huns spoke a Yeniseian language and influenced other languages in the region. The Yeniseianpeople were likely assimilated later by...
through long-term contact with neighboring peoples such as Iranic, Mongolic, Tocharian, Uralic and Yeniseianpeoples. Many vastly differing ethnic groups have...
assimilated local Yeniseianpeople which were closely related to the Paleo-Eskimo groups. From the thirteenth to eighteenth century the Altai people were dominated...
Alexander Vovin, the Jie were most likely a Yeniseianpeople and spoke next to Chinese one of the Yeniseian languages. Among the Sixteen Kingdoms, the...
through long-term contact with neighboring peoples such as Iranic, Mongolic, Tocharian, Uralic and Yeniseianpeoples. In Central Asia, the earliest surviving...
suggests that the Xiongnu spoke a Yeniseian language, further connecting them with the Jie people. Among the Yeniseian languages, Jie is hypothesized to...
the Ob River, from interactions between the aboriginal Yeniseian population and Samoyedic peoples that came to the region from the Sayan Mountains during...
the sole surviving language of a Yeniseian language family. It is spoken along the middle Yenisei basin by the Ket people. The language is threatened with...
Karasuk is a hypothetical language family that links the Yeniseian languages of central Siberia with the Burushaski language of northern Pakistan. Hyde...
500 people identified themselves as Ket during the 2002 Russian census. The Ket language, also known as Imbatski-Ket or Yenisei Ostyak, is a Yeniseian language...
Yugh (/ˈjuːɡ/ YOOG; Yug) is a Yeniseian language, closely related to Ket, formerly spoken by the Yugh people, one of the southern groups along the Yenisei...
Turkic-speaking people. They were also proposed to be the ancestors of Tungusic speakers among the later Shiwei people, or are related to Na-Dené and Yeniseian speakers...
the Ket people and the Yugh people have lived along the banks of the Yenisey since ancient times, and this region is the location of the Yeniseian language...
(2020) has cast doubt on the Yeniseian theory. If assuming that the ancient Yeniseians were represented by modern Ket people, who are more genetically similar...
through long-term contact with neighboring peoples such as Iranic, Mongolic, Tocharian, Uralic, and Yeniseianpeoples. During the 9th and 10th centuries CE...
geographic location or surrounding features, rather than by any features of the people themselves, and often carried little distinction of who the Han Chinese...
turbulent history in the last century. 3. Ket is the last survivor of the Yeniseian family along the middle of the Yenisei River and its tributaries. It has...
Yeniseianpeoples Ket (Deng): Along middle Yenisei river banks Nivkh (Gilyak): Sakhalin, Russia Oroks (Uilta): Sakhalin, Russia Austroasiatic peoples...
ISBN 978-1-107-63388-9. Vajda, Edward J. (2013). YeniseianPeoples and Languages: A History of Yeniseian Studies with an Annotated Bibliography and a Source...
the Ket people, a Yeniseian ethnic group historically widespread along the Yenisey river, live. Their Ket language, the only of the Yeniseian languages...
region. There is also evidence for contact with Iranian, Uralic and Yeniseianpeoples. The Kazakhs emerged as an ethno-linguistic group during the early...
languages. A symposium in Alaska in February 2008 included papers on the Yeniseian and Na-Dené families. Edward Vajda of Western Washington University summarized...
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