Uelen
Uelen is a rural locality in Chukotsky District, just south of the Arctic Circle in Chukotka Autonomous Okrug in the Russian Far East. As of the 2010 Census, its population was 720. Located near Cape Dezhnev where the Bering Sea meets the Chukchi Sea, it is the easternmost settlement in Russia and the whole of Eurasia. Uelen is the closest Eurasian settlement to North America, it is on the northeast corner of the Uelen Lagoon, a 15 by 3 kilometres east-west lagoon separated from the ocean by a sandspit. Municipally, Uelen is subordinated to Chukotsky Municipal District and is incorporated as Uelen Rural Settlement. There are a number of competing ideas as to the origin of the name of the village; the name Uelen is thought by some sources to derive from the Chukchi "uvelen" meaning "black, thawed patch", since the village is found at the foot of a hill surrounded by black mounds which are visible throughout the year and were used as a navigation aid in the region. There is a local legend, it describes the life of a strong local man called Uvelel'yn, so named because he was an orphan, dressed in tattered rags.
As he grew older, so he used his strength to gain his revenge over the local people for perceived slights received during his childhood because of his background. In fear for their lives, the villagers killed Uvelel'yn; however they realised that in order to prevent these events repeating themselves in the future, they should take better care of their orphans and the village soon got its name to remind the villagers of their duty to those less fortunate than themselves. Prior to being named Uelen, the village was called Ulyk, meaning land's end and flooded place respectively. Not surprising given that the village is the most easterly place in Asia and its position on a spit with the Chukchi sea to the north and a lagoon to the south makes the land prone to flooding; the first mention of the name Uelen appears on a map from the Billings-Sarychev expedition from 1792. Archeological investigation has revealed the existence of a settlement in and around the present day site of the village about 30 km from the village for at least 2000 years, based on fishing and the hunting of marine mammals.
The main site of archeological investigation is at the Ekven site, a site of importance comparable to that of the Ipiutak Site across the Bering Strait on Point Hope. Prior to the Russian Revolution, Uelen was, in 1912, a settlement of around 300 individuals divided into four communes and the headquarters of the Russian administration in the Chukotka Region and was an important trading port with both local Russian peoples and America. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, Uelen became one of the first trade co-operatives in Chukotka and a dedicated American trading post was established; the first school in Chukotka was established in Uelen in 1916. In the first half of the twentieth century, Uelen was the site of one of the first Russian arctic research stations. In the 1950s, Uelen became a focal point in the region, along with Lavrentiya and Inchoun for the relocation of indigenous peoples following the decision to close a large number of uneconomical villages. Uelen absorbed the population from the nearby village of Dezhnevo.
This village, to the west of Cape Peek and called Keniskun by the local Chukchi was an important regional coastal trading centre in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but was deemed unviable by the Soviet government and the villagers were moved to Uelen. The addition of Dezhnevo carvers to the existing artistic school in Uelen served to strengthen Uelen's cultural reputation not just in the region but across Russia with notable carvers such as Pyotr Penkok and Stepan Ettugi working in Uelen. In addition to absorbing the population of Dezhnevo, Uelen absorbed the part of the population of the former village of Naukan, which itself had absorbed the population of a number of small villages from the Cape Dezhnev/Diomede Islands area. Although Dezhnevo was abolished, the villagers in Uelen still use it as a base for their fishing and a handful of houses are still maintained for this purpose; as well as a fishing base, the site of the village is still used as an occasional port by Uelen. At the end of summer, storms in the Chukchi Sea can make it impossible for ships to dock at Uelen to unload their supplies.
When this occurs, the ships dock at Dezhnevo and the cargo is carried across land to Uelen. In more recent history, Uelen is where Dimitri Kieffer and Karl Bushby entered Russia during their Goliath Expedition after crossing the Bering Strait; the two were arrested because they had failed to enter the country at a proper port of entry, but their journey was allowed to continue. The population according to the most recent census results was 740, of whom 368 were male and 352 female. Uelen had a population of 740 at the start of 2009, down from 776 in 2003 Other villagers are Russian; the village is famous for its walrus ivory carvings. It has long been a major artistic centre in the region, with Several of the leading exponents of the craft, such as Vukvutagin, Vukvol and Khukhutan working out of Uelen; the Uelen Bone Carving Studio contains the world's only museum of Walrus ivory carving. In 2004, a successful exhibition of their work was held in Bern and carvers from Uelen took first place in
Soviet Census (1989)
The 1989 Soviet census, conducted between 12-19 January of that year, was the last one that took place in the former USSR. The census found the total population to be 286,730,819 inhabitants. In 1989, the Soviet Union ranked as the third most populous in the world, above the United States, although it was well behind China and India. In 1989, about half of the Soviet Union's total population lived in the Russian SFSR, one-sixth of them in Ukraine. Two-thirds of the population was urban, leaving the rural population with 34.3%. In this way, its gradual increase continued, as shown by the series represented by 47.9%, 56.3% and 62.3% of 1959, 1970 and 1979 respectively. The last two national censuses showed that the country had been experiencing an average annual increase of about 2.5 million people, although it was a slight decrease from a figure of around 3 million per year in the previous intercensal period, 1959-1970. This post-war increase had contributed to the USSR's partial demographic recovery from the significant population loss that the USSR had suffered during the Great Patriotic War, before it, during Stalin's Great Purge of 1936-1938.
The previous postwar censuses, conducted in 1959, 1970 and 1979, had enumerated 208,826,650, 241,720,134, 262,436,227 inhabitants respectively. In 1990, the Soviet Union was more populated than both the United States and Canada together, having some 40 million more inhabitants than the U. S. alone. However, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in late 1991, the combined population of the 15 former Soviet republics stagnated at around 290 million inhabitants for the period 1995-2000; this significant slowdown may in part be due to the remarkable socio-economic changes that followed the disintegration of the USSR, that have tended to reduce more the decreasing birth rates. The next census was planned for 1999. Demographics of the Soviet Union Republics of the Soviet Union Soviet Census First All-Union Census of the Soviet Union Soviet Union Barbara A. Anderson and Brian D. Silver, "Growth and diversity of the population of the Soviet Union", The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 510, No.
1, 155-177, 1990. Ralph S. Clem, Ed. Research Guide to Russian and Soviet Censuses, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986. John C. Dewdney, "Population change in the Soviet Union, 1979-1989," Geography, Vol. 75, Pt. 3, No. 328, July 1990, 273-277. Subjects of Russia, on the www.statoids.com website
Polar climate
The polar climate regions are characterized by a lack of warm summers. Every month in a polar climate has an average temperature of less than 10 °C. Regions with polar climate cover more than 20% of the Earth. Most of these regions are far from the equator, in this case, winter days are short and summer days are long. A polar climate consists of cool summers and cold winters, which results in treeless tundra, glaciers, or a permanent or semi-permanent layer of ice. There are two types of polar climate: tundra climate. A tundra climate is characterized by having at least one month whose average temperature is above 0 °C, while an ice cap climate has no months above 0 °C. In a tundra climate, trees can not grow. In an ice cap climate, no plants can grow, ice accumulates until it flows elsewhere. Many high altitude locations on Earth have a climate where no month has an average temperature of 10 °C or higher, but as this is due to elevation, this climate is referred to as Alpine climate. Alpine climate can mimic either ice cap climate.
On Earth, the only continent where the ice cap polar climate is predominant is Antarctica. All but a few isolated coastal areas on the island of Greenland have the ice cap climate. Coastal regions of Greenland that do not have permanent ice sheets have the less extreme tundra climates; the northernmost part of the Eurasian land mass, from the extreme northeastern coast of Scandinavia and eastwards to the Bering Strait, large areas of northern Siberia and northern Iceland have tundra climate as well. Large areas in northern Canada and northern Alaska have tundra climate, changing to ice cap climate in the most northern parts of Canada. Southernmost South America and such subantarctic islands such as the South Shetland Islands and the Falkland Islands have tundra climates of slight thermal range in which no month is as warm as 10 °C; these subantarctic lowlands are found closer to the equator than the coastal tundras of the Arctic basin. Some parts of the Arctic are covered by ice year-round, nearly all parts of the Arctic experience long periods with some form of ice on the surface.
Average January temperatures range from about −40 to 0 °C, winter temperatures can drop below −50 °C over large parts of the Arctic. Average July temperatures range from about −10 to 10 °C, with some land areas exceeding 30 °C in summer; the Arctic consists of ocean, surrounded by land. As such, the climate of much of the Arctic is moderated by the ocean water, which can never have a temperature below −2 °C. In winter, this warm water though covered by the polar ice pack, keeps the North Pole from being the coldest place in the Northern Hemisphere, it is part of the reason that Antarctica is so much colder than the Arctic. In summer, the presence of the nearby water keeps coastal areas from warming as much as they might otherwise, just as it does in temperate regions with maritime climates; the climate of Antarctica is the coldest on Earth. Antarctica has the lowest occurring temperature recorded: −89.2 °C at Vostok Station. It is extremely dry, averaging 166 millimetres of precipitation per year, as weather fronts penetrate far into the continent.
There have been several attempts at quantifying. Climatologist Wladimir Köppen demonstrated a relationship between the Arctic and Antarctic tree lines and the 10 °C summer isotherm. See Köppen climate classification for more information. Otto Nordenskjöld theorized that winter conditions play a role: His formula is W = 9 − 0.1 C, where W is the average temperature in the warmest month and C the average of the coldest month, both in degrees Celsius. For example, if a particular location had an average temperature of −20 °C in its coldest month, the warmest month would need to average 11 °C or higher for trees to be able to survive there as 9 − 0.1 = 11. Nordenskiöld's line tends to run to the north of Köppen's near the west coasts of the Northern Hemisphere continents, south of it in the interior sections, at about the same latitude along the east coasts of both Asia and North America. In the Southern Hemisphere, all of Tierra del Fuego lies outside the polar region in Nordenskiöld's system, but part of the island is reckoned as being within the Antarctic under Köppen's.
In 1947, Holdridge improved on these schemes, by defining biotemperature: the mean annual temperature, where all temperatures below 0 °C or 32 °F are treated as 0 °C. If the mean biotemperature is between 1.5 and 3 °C, Holdridge quantifies the climate as subpolar. Arctic oscillation Köppen climate classification NOAA State of the Arctic Report 2006
Providence Bay
Providence Bay is a fjord in the southern coast of the Chukchi Peninsula of northeastern Siberia. It was a popular rendezvous, wintering spot, provisioning spot for whalers and traders in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Emma Harbor is a large sheltered bay in the eastern shore of Providence Bay. Provideniya and Ureliki settlements and Provideniya Bay Airport stand on the Komsomolskaya Bay. Plover Bay in English sources sometimes refers to the anchorage behind Napkum Spit within Providence Bay but was used as a synonym for Providence Bay. Plover Bay takes its name from HMS Plover, a British ship which overwintered in Emma Harbor in 1848-1849. HMS Plover with captain Thomas E. L. Moore left Plymouth in January 1848 for the Bering Sea to find the lost Franklin Expedition. On October 17, 1848 Moore anchored his ship in a safe harbor. Lieutenant William Hulme Hooper of the Plover attributes the name Port Emma to Captain Moore but provides no explanation of the choice of name; the entrance to Providence Bay is delineated by Mys Lysaya Golova on the east and by Mys Lesovskogo on the west.
Mys Lysaya Golova is about 7 miles west-northwest of Cape Chukotsky. Providence Bay is about 8 km wide at 34 km long, it is about 4 km wide through much of its length below Emma Harbor, about 2.5 km wide just above the juncture. The lower part of the bay runs northeast, while the upper part dog-legs north and is about 2 km wide. Depth soundings show a maximum depth of 82 fathoms. A more recent chart shows depths of 10 to 11 fathoms at the entrance. Emma Harbor has been described as "the best harbor on the Asiatic coast north of Petropavlosk...." and is the only important harbor on Providence Bay. It is a fjord in its own right, about 14 km from the mouth of Providence Bay and about 1.5 x 6 km in extent with depths shown from 6 to 15 fathoms. Besides Emma Harbor there are three or four other sheltered anchorages within Providence Bay that are named by early writers: Port Providence, Cache Bay, Telegraph Harbor, Snug Harbor. Port Providence is the anchorage behind Plover Spit, it serves as the quarantine and hazardous cargo anchorage for Provideniya.
Plover Spit is called Napkum Spit in an 1869 account. It has its origin in the moraine left by the glacier; the tip of the spit is Mys Gaydamak. Cache bay is the cove in the eastern shore of the fjord, north of Emma Harbor. Snug Harbor is located behind Whale Island. Telegraph Harbor is named for the Western Union Telegraph Expedition of 1866-1867 which wintered there, it may be the same as Snug Harbor. The US Coast Survey chart shows the entire upper portion of the fjord as Vsadnik Bay; the Asiatic Pilot of 1909 refers to Vladimir Bay and Cache Bay, separated by Popov point, notes that the bays are shallower above this point. Plover Spit is site of an abandoned Eskimo village with characteristic semi-underground houses, a more recent village of yarangas, one of the 1869 eclipse observatories; the US Coast Survey charts show the village at the base of the spit as Rirak, starting in 1928 show a village Uredlak on the south shore of Emma Harbor The Soviet-era village of Plover was located on the mainland near the spit.
Nasskatulok, a Yupik village at the head of Plover Bay was reported by Aurel Krause but not mentioned by Waldemar Bogoras There were villages on the coast. Aiwan, a Yupik village, lay east of the bay between a freshwater lake, it was abandoned in 1942 due to concern it could be hit by Soviet Navy shells. The USCGS chart shows a village Akatlak just west of the mouth of the bay. Providence Bay and Emma Harbor do not appear on maps before 1850. Providence Bay was visited by Russian explorer Kurbat Ivanov in 1660 but his explorations of the Gulf of Anadyr were not reported. Golden Gate, a ship of the Russian–American Telegraph Expedition, visited Plover Bay in September 1865, having just missed encounter with "the famed and dreaded" CSS Shenandoah. Frederick Whymper, member of this expedition, reported that by this time "it was no uncommon thing to find several whaling vessels lying inside in summer". Whymper described the mountains around Plover Bay as "composed of an infinite number of fragments split up by action of frost... innumerable and many-coloured lichens and mosses are the only vegetation to be seen, except on a patch of open green country near Emma Harbour, where domesticated reindeer graze."The area around Providence Bay provided good whaling in the early
Anadyr (town)
Anadyr is a port town and the administrative center of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, located at the mouth of the Anadyr River at the tip of a peninsula that protrudes into Anadyrsky Liman. Anadyr is the easternmost town in Russia, it was known as Novo–Mariinsk. Although the town itself has only been in existence for just over a century, the origins of the name Anadyr are much older; the name derives from the Yukaghir word "any-an" meaning "river". When Semyon Dezhnev met Yukaghir peoples in the area and the indigenous name was corrupted to form "Onandyr" Anadyrsk, the name of the ostrog upstream of the present-day settlement, from which the current name is derived; the ostrog was the only Russian settlement east of the Kolyma River on the Chukotka Peninsula for most of the 18th century, though this original settlement was situated further up the Anadyr River, nearer to Markovo than the site of the current town. Pyotr Baranov established a trading post near the present town site in the early 19th century.
The Chukchi settled around it and formed the village of Vyon in 1830. The present settlement was founded in 1889 as Novo–Mariinsk by L. F. Grinevetsky, who sailed into the Anadyrsky Liman on July 9, 1889; the town's first building was completed twelve days and as it was the name-day of Tsaritsa Maria Feodorovna the town was named Mariinsk. Since this was not the first time that a town had been named Mariinsk in Russia, the name was swiftly changed to Novo–Mariinsk; the Kamchatka Revkom sent the first Bolsheviks—Mikhail Mandrikov and Avgust Berzin—to Anadyr to set up an underground organization to undermine and overthrow the resident White Army forces stationed in the town. These two, along with a small group of other Russian immigrants and a handful of Chuvans, established the First Revolutionary Committee of Chukotka, their presence went undetected, although it did arouse suspicion. However, just before they were about to be discovered by the resident White Army troops, they launched an attack against them on the night of December 16, 1919.
They intended to free the local indigenous people from their debts to the Russian incomers and dismantle of the capitalist infrastructure, established in the town. The attempts at seizing the property of the merchant class in Anadyr was successful, but they were unable to seize control of the armory and ammunition supplies within the town; the merchants used this opportunity to reassert themselves, by January 30, 1920, they surrounded the Revkom offices and attacked. One of the leaders, Vasily Titov, was killed and a number of others were wounded. Mikhail Mandrikov himself surrendered. Although the survivors were imprisoned, the merchants decided to eliminate them permanently. Under the pretense of transferring them to another site, they led them out of the town and executed them out on the tundra; the merchants' and White Army's success had been aided by the fact that a number of the Revkom members had been out the town visiting the village of Markovo. When these people returned, they were ambushed and all survivors killed.
The merchants set about reestablishing the status quo, all the while pretending to the Kamchatka Revkom that they themselves were socialists when inquiries came as to the whereabouts of their colleagues, going as far as to set up a fake Anadyr branch of the Russian Communist Party of Bolsheviks. For the merchants in Anadyr, members of the first Revkom had managed to establish branches in Markovo and Ust-Belaya, who were not convinced by the claims coming from Anadyr and, whilst establishing the Second Revolutionary Committee of Chukotka in Markovo pressed the Kamchatka Revkom for assistance; the Kamchatka Revkom responded by sending a party to investigate. A number of those involved in the overthrow of the First Revolutionary Committee either ceased their political activity in the hope of blending into the background, or fled Chukotka for Alaska. However, the merchants fared worse eighteen months when the Bolsheviks returned and began to reorganize urban life. Struggles continued for some time in the Russian Far East, it took until early 1923 before communications were sent from Kamchatka by Red Army commanders indicating that all White Army forces in Chukotka had been eliminated.
Monuments to those members of the First Revolutionary Committee were erected in Anadyr on 5 July 1921. It was only in 1969 that an elderly man said he remembered where the bodies had been buried, having seen them being interred in a cemetery in Tavayvaam. Following this tip, the remains were recovered and they were paraded solemnly through Anadyr to the monuments, where they were buried with full honors. In 1923, Novo–Mariinsk was renamed Anadyr. During World War II, an airfield was built here for the Alaska-Siberian air route used to ferry American Lend-Lease aircraft to the Eastern Front. During the 1960s, Anadyr was home to an R-12 Dvina medium-range ballistic missile complex, which targeted American military installations in Alaska; the base was the USSR's only remote missile site. Anadyr was granted town status in 1965, around which time it had a population of 5,600; the Hope Sled Dog Race was run between Nome, Alaska for more than a decade. It is claimed that the town of Anadyr annexed the neighboring "ethnic village" of Tavayvaam in May 1994, that this was done by governor Alexander Nazarov with a view to saving money from the autonomous okrug budget.
If the national village had indeed been absorbed into the town of
Nome, Alaska
Nome is a city in the Nome Census Area in the Unorganized Borough of Alaska, United States. The city is located on the southern Seward Peninsula coast on Norton Sound of the Bering Sea. In 2016 the population was estimated at 3,797, a rise from the 3,598 recorded in the 2010 Census, up from 3,505 in 2000. Nome was incorporated on April 9, 1901, was once the most-populous city in Alaska. Nome lies within the region of the Bering Straits Native Corporation, headquartered in Nome; the city of Nome claims to be home to the world's largest gold pan, although this claim has been disputed by the Canadian city of Quesnel, British Columbia. In the winter of 1925, a diphtheria epidemic raged among Alaska Natives in the Nome area. Fierce territory-wide blizzard conditions prevented the delivery of a life-saving serum by airplane from Anchorage. A relay of dog sled teams was organized to deliver the serum; the origin of the city's name "Nome" is debated. The first is that the name was given by Jafet Lindeberg, an immigrant from Norway.
Nome appears as a toponym in several places in Norway. A second theory is that Nome received its name through an error: when a British cartographer copied an ambiguous annotation made by a British officer on a nautical chart, while on a voyage up the Bering Strait; the officer had written "? Name" next to the unnamed cape; the mapmaker misread the annotation as "C. Nome", or Cape Nome, used that name on his own chart; the third proposed origin of the name is from a misunderstanding of the local Inupiaq word for "Where at?", Naami. In February 1899, some local miners and merchants voted to change the name from Nome to Anvil City, because of the confusion with Cape Nome, 12 miles south, the Nome River, the mouth of, 4 mi south of Nome; the United States Post Office in Nome refused to accept the change. Fearing a move of the post office to Nome City, a mining camp on the Nome River, the merchants unhappily agreed to change the name of Anvil City back to Nome. Nome is located at 64°30′14″N 165°23′58″W.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 21.6 square miles, of which 12.5 square miles is land and 9.1 square miles is water. Nome has a subarctic climate, with long cold winters, short, cool summers. However, conditions in both winter and summer are moderated by the city's coastal location: winters are less severe than in the Interior, conversely, summers are lukewarm. For example, Fairbanks at a similar parallel quite far inland has much greater temperature swings with both warm and cold temperatures throughout the year; the coldest month is January, averaging 5.2 °F, although highs on average breach the freezing point on 2–4 days per month from December to March and there are 76 days annually of 0 °F or lower temperatures, which have been recorded as early as October 12, 1996 and as late as May 5 in 1984. Average highs stay below freezing from late October until late April, the average first and last dates of freezing lows are August 30 and June 9 a freeze-free period of 81 days.
The warmest month is July, with an average of 52.2 °F. Snow averages 76 inches per season, with the average first and last dates of measurable snowfall being October 4 and May 16. Precipitation is greatest in the summer months, averages 16.8 inches per year. The annual average temperature is 27.35 °F. Extreme temperatures range from −54 °F on January 27–28, 1989 up to 86 °F on June 19, 2013 and July 31, 1977; the hottest month has been July 1977 with a mean temperature of 56.3 °F or 13.5 °C and the coldest February 1990 with a mean of −17.2 °F or −27.3 °C. Bering Sea water temperatures around Nome vary during summer from 34 to 48 °F. Nome first appeared on the 1900 U. S. Census as an unincorporated village of 12,488 residents. At the time, it was the largest community in Alaska, ahead of Skagway and Juneau, the 2nd and 3rd largest places; the demographics for 1900 included 42 Natives, 41 Asians and 10 Blacks. It was formally incorporated as a city in 1901. By 1910, it had fallen to 2,600 residents.
Of those, 2,311 were White, 235 were 54 for all other races. It dropped to the 2nd largest city in Alaska behind Fairbanks. By 1920, it dropped with just 852 residents. In 1930, it rose to 6th largest with 1,213 residents. In 1940, it remained in 6th place with 1,559 residents, it dropped to 10th place in 1950 with 1,876 residents. In 1960, it rose to 8th place with 2,316 residents. By 1970, Nome had fallen out of the top 10 places to 18th largest community. In 1980, it was 15th largest. In 1990, it was 16th largest. In 2000, it was 25th largest. In 2010, it was now the 30th largest; as of the census of 2000, there were 3,505 people, 1,184 households, 749 families residing in the city. The population density was 279.7 people per square mile. There were 1,356 housing units at an average density of 108.2 per square mile. The racial makeup of the city was 51.04% Native American, 37.89% White, 1.54% Asian, 0.86% Black or African American, 0.06% Pacific I
Yupik peoples
The Yupik are a group of indigenous or aboriginal peoples of western and southcentral Alaska and the Russian Far East. They are related to the Inuit and Iñupiat peoples. Yupik peoples include the following: Alutiiq people, or Sugpiaq, of the Alaska Peninsula and coastal and island areas of southcentral Alaska Central Alaskan Yup'ik people of the Yukon-Kuskokwim delta, the Kuskokwim River, along the northern coast of Bristol Bay as far east as Nushagak Bay and the northern Alaska Peninsula at Naknek River and Egegik Bay in Alaska Siberian Yupik people, including Naukan and Sirenik of the Russian Far East and St. Lawrence Island in western Alaska The Central Alaskan Yup'ik people are by far the most numerous of the various Alaska Native groups and speak the Central Alaskan Yup'ik language, a member of the Eskimo–Aleut family of languages; as of the 2001 U. S. Census, the Yupik population in the United States numbered over 24,000, of whom over 22,000 lived in Alaska, the vast majority in the seventy or so communities in the traditional Yup'ik territory of western and southwestern Alaska.
US census data for Yupik include 2,355 Sugpiaq. Yup'ik comes from the Yup'ik word yuk meaning "person" plus the post-base -pik meaning "real" or "genuine." Thus, it means "real people." The ethnographic literature sometimes refers to the Yup ` ik people or their language as Yuit. In the Hooper Bay-Chevak and Nunivak dialects of Yup'ik, both the language and the people are known as Cup'ik; the use of an apostrophe in the name "Yup’ik", compared to Siberian "Yupik", exemplifies the Central Yup’ik's orthography, where "the apostrophe represents gemination of the ‘p’ sound". The "person/people" in the Eskimo languages: The common ancestors of the Eskimo and Aleut are believed by archaeologists to have their origin in eastern Siberia, arriving in the Bering Sea area about 10,000 years ago. Research on blood types, confirmed by linguistic and DNA findings, suggests that the ancestors of American Indians reached North America before the ancestors of the Eskimo and Aleut. There appear to have been several waves of migration from Siberia to the Americas by way of the Bering land bridge, which became exposed between 20,000 and 8,000 years ago during periods of glaciation.
By about 3,000 years ago, the progenitors of the Yupiit had settled along the coastal areas of what would become western Alaska, with migrations up the coastal rivers—notably the Yukon and Kuskokwim—around 1400 AD reaching as far upriver as Paimiut on the Yukon and Crow Village on the Kuskokwim. The Siberian Yupik may represent a back-migration of the Eskimo people to Siberia from Alaska. Traditionally, families spent the spring and summer at fish camp joined with others at village sites for the winter. Many families still harvest the traditional subsistence resources Pacific salmon and seal; the men's communal house, the qasgiq, was the community center for ceremonies and festivals which included singing and storytelling. The qasgiq was used in the winter months, because people would travel in family groups following food sources throughout the spring and fall months. Aside from ceremonies and festivals, the qasgiq was where the men taught the young boys survival and hunting skills, as well as other life lessons.
The young boys were taught how to make tools and qayaqs during the winter months in the qasgiq. The ceremonies involve a shaman; the women's house, the ena, was traditionally right next door. In some areas they were connected by a tunnel. Women taught the young girls how to tan hides and sew and cook game and fish, weave. Boys would live with their mothers until they were about five years old they would live in the qasgiq; each winter, for a period of between three and six weeks, the young boys and young girls would switch roles, with the men teaching the girls survival and hunting skills and toolmaking, the women teaching the boys how to sew and cook. In Yup'ik group dances, individuals remain stationary while moving their upper body and arms rhythmically, their gestures accentuated by hand held dance fans similar in design to Cherokee dance fans; the limited motion by no means limits the expressiveness of the dances, which can be gracefully flowing, bursting with energy, or wryly humorous. The Yup'ik are unique among native peoples of the Americas in that they name children after the last person in the community to have died.
The kuspuk is a traditional Yup ` ik garment, worn in both formal settings in Alaska. The seal-oil lamp was an important piece of furniture; the five Yupik languages are still widely spoken. The Alaskan and Siberian Yupik, like the Alaskan Inupiat, adopted the system of writing developed by Moravian Church missionaries during the 1760s in Greenland; the Alaskan Yupik and Inupiat are the only Northern indigenous peoples to have developed their own system of picture writing, but this system died with its creators. Late nineteenth-century Moravian missionaries to the Yupik in southwestern Alaska used Yupik in church services, translated the scriptures into the people's language. Russian explorers in the 1800s erroneously called the Yupik people bordering the territory of the somewhat unrelated Aleut as Aleut, or Alutiiq, in Yupik. By tradition, this term has remained in use, as well as Sugpiaq, both of which refer to the Yupik of South Central Alaska and Kodiak; the whole Eskimo–Aleut language family, all Alaskan languages are shown below.
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