Recent from talks
Soyot
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Soyot
The Soyot are an ethnic group of Samoyedic and Turkic origin who live mainly in the Oka region in the Okinsky District in Buryatia, Russia. They share much of their history with the Tofalar, Tozhu Tuvans, Dukha, and Buryat; the Soyot have taken on a great deal of Buryat cultural influence and were grouped together with them under Soviet policy. Due to intermarriage between Soyots and Buryats, the Soyot population is heavily mixed with the Buryat. In 2000, they were reinstated as a distinct ethnic group.
Like other taiga peoples, the Soyot traditionally practiced reindeer breeding and hunting and lived nomadically, but today most Soyot live in villages. According to the 2021 census, there were 4,368 Soyots in Russia.
The Soyot language is Turkic, and closely corresponds with the Tofalar language; most Soyot spoke Buryat during Russian rule, but following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been an active effort to revitalize the formerly extinct Soyot language.
The name Soyot is from the endonym 'soyyt.' The Buryat call them 'hoyod' and the Tofalar call them 'hazut' which is derived from the name of the largest Soyot clan, the Khaazuut.
According to Larisa R. Pavlinskaya, a Russian ethnographer based in St. Petersburg, Russia, the ancestor of the Soyots (and the closely related Tofalars, Tozhu Tuvans, and Dukha) were proto-Samoyedic hunter-gatherers who arrived in the Eastern Sayan region from Western Siberia at the end of the third millennium BC and the beginning of the second millennium BC. At the beginning the first millennium AD, Turkic speaking cattle and horse breeders migrated from the Inner Asian steppes and would go on to significantly influence the Samoyedic, Ket, and Tungus populations of the Eastern Sayan Mountains. Despite adopting their language, these groups resisted full Turkification by retreating into the inaccessible mountains and traded with the new steppe peoples by providing them with furs throughout the Middle Ages.
Around 350-400 years ago, the Soyots moved from the Lake Khövsgöl area to modern day Buryatia, where the Dukha and Uyghur-Uryankhay (Tuha) people were still living. Many reindeer herding Soyots moved to the mountain range dividing the Oka River and Irkut River.
In the mid 1600s, the Russian Empire first reached the Eastern Sayans and had asserted full control of the area by the beginning of the 1700s; following the Treaty of Kiakhta in 1727, the Russian government then resettled 100 Buryat families from the regions of Pribaikalia and Transbaikilia to the Okinsky area to guard the Chinese border. The newly arrived Buryats adopted some Soyot customs, such as taking up yak breeding and seasonal migration. They also adopted the practice of using reindeer as mounts to hunt but never took up reindeer-herding, preferring to instead borrow reindeer during the hunting season or keeping their reindeer among Soyot herds.
The Buryats greatly influenced the Soyots. By the end of the 1800s, the Buryats dominated administration and their language displaced the Soyot language, and even their cattle-breeding culture came to predominate the Soyots' traditional reindeer-herding.
Hub AI
Soyot AI simulator
(@Soyot_simulator)
Soyot
The Soyot are an ethnic group of Samoyedic and Turkic origin who live mainly in the Oka region in the Okinsky District in Buryatia, Russia. They share much of their history with the Tofalar, Tozhu Tuvans, Dukha, and Buryat; the Soyot have taken on a great deal of Buryat cultural influence and were grouped together with them under Soviet policy. Due to intermarriage between Soyots and Buryats, the Soyot population is heavily mixed with the Buryat. In 2000, they were reinstated as a distinct ethnic group.
Like other taiga peoples, the Soyot traditionally practiced reindeer breeding and hunting and lived nomadically, but today most Soyot live in villages. According to the 2021 census, there were 4,368 Soyots in Russia.
The Soyot language is Turkic, and closely corresponds with the Tofalar language; most Soyot spoke Buryat during Russian rule, but following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been an active effort to revitalize the formerly extinct Soyot language.
The name Soyot is from the endonym 'soyyt.' The Buryat call them 'hoyod' and the Tofalar call them 'hazut' which is derived from the name of the largest Soyot clan, the Khaazuut.
According to Larisa R. Pavlinskaya, a Russian ethnographer based in St. Petersburg, Russia, the ancestor of the Soyots (and the closely related Tofalars, Tozhu Tuvans, and Dukha) were proto-Samoyedic hunter-gatherers who arrived in the Eastern Sayan region from Western Siberia at the end of the third millennium BC and the beginning of the second millennium BC. At the beginning the first millennium AD, Turkic speaking cattle and horse breeders migrated from the Inner Asian steppes and would go on to significantly influence the Samoyedic, Ket, and Tungus populations of the Eastern Sayan Mountains. Despite adopting their language, these groups resisted full Turkification by retreating into the inaccessible mountains and traded with the new steppe peoples by providing them with furs throughout the Middle Ages.
Around 350-400 years ago, the Soyots moved from the Lake Khövsgöl area to modern day Buryatia, where the Dukha and Uyghur-Uryankhay (Tuha) people were still living. Many reindeer herding Soyots moved to the mountain range dividing the Oka River and Irkut River.
In the mid 1600s, the Russian Empire first reached the Eastern Sayans and had asserted full control of the area by the beginning of the 1700s; following the Treaty of Kiakhta in 1727, the Russian government then resettled 100 Buryat families from the regions of Pribaikalia and Transbaikilia to the Okinsky area to guard the Chinese border. The newly arrived Buryats adopted some Soyot customs, such as taking up yak breeding and seasonal migration. They also adopted the practice of using reindeer as mounts to hunt but never took up reindeer-herding, preferring to instead borrow reindeer during the hunting season or keeping their reindeer among Soyot herds.
The Buryats greatly influenced the Soyots. By the end of the 1800s, the Buryats dominated administration and their language displaced the Soyot language, and even their cattle-breeding culture came to predominate the Soyots' traditional reindeer-herding.
Recent media