Ket-Imbak Yeniseni River Siberia
The Ket-Imbak [Ket] ,a small relict population of the nearly extinct
Yenisenian people,occupy small villages about halfway between the
headwaters of the Yeniseni River and the Kara Sea.This fluvial
system,which is about 4000km west of the Seward Peninsula,
Alaska,flows NNW along the western flank of the Central Siberian
Plateau.
The Ket probably treked north from the vicinty of the Altai and
Sayan Mountains of central south Siberia,where they may have
been neighbours of the proto-Samoyed.Ket folklore relates that
their ancient ancestors crossed a huge mountain [ the Sayan
Mountains on the border of Russis and China ?] into the taiga to
escape Tystad warriors ca 200-300? ADE.The fierce Kiliki forced
the Ket to move furthur north ca 800-900? ADE,where they might
have mixed with or replaced the native inhabitants.Some Ket
words seem to have been borrowed from an "Eskimo" language.
The Knotts,Assans,Arins,Baikats,and Pumpokols,who shared a
cultural heritage with the Ket,lived furthur south in the Yeniseni
River valley.Ca 1500-1800 ADE they were assimilated by their
neighbours [ ie;the Assans merged with the Ewenki to the east]
[E Vajda,2002?].
The Ket loose fitting,male robe [cafton] and scarf are unique to the
taiga.It could have been worn in the south and adopted to colder
conditions.There is evidence that the southern Yenisenian groups
[ie;Arins] raised stock and smelted iron.The Ket did not.The foraged,
fished from dugout canoes and hunted [ie;waterfowl] with poison
arrows and dogs.Some families used reindeer to move camp.They
lived in tipi with conical pole frames and a felt or bark cover during
the warm months and their winter abode was an earth-log dugout.
Hunters used skis during the snow season.The Ket were a patriarch
society.A bride price was paid for a wife,who came to live with her
husband's family.They were shamanists,who revered bears.Each
group had a totem animal,which they did not kill.Their folklore hero
was Balna,an ancient warrior.Broken personal possessions and the
occasional dog have been recovered from Ket graves,which were
dug in the earth.Their musical instrument was the pymet,a type of
mouth organThe government forced the Ket to live in coperative
settlements in the 1930s,[ibid].
The 2003 census contains the names of approximately 2000 Ket.
but only about 100 speak the language fluently and they are mainly
over 50 years old.The Ket language bears no resemblance to any
language that is spoken east of the Yeniseni River in Siberia.Na Dene
languages are spoken by North America by numerous Athabaskan
tribes in Alaska,Tingit,Eyak,some western Canadian Indian popul-
ations,theHopi of California and a number of SW USA tribes [Navajo
,Apache].As early as 1923 linguists speculated that there might be
a relationship betwen the Yenisenic and Na Dene languages.About
10 years ago M Rublen produced a list of 36 cognates with similar
meanings betwen the two languages.However cognates can occur
by chance [B Comrie,2008].
E Vajda [2008] demonstrated how Ket words were systematically
altered to create Athabaskan words and that the abstact forms of
lexical and grammatical morphemes and the rules of compostion
of Ket verbs find systematic and numerous parallels in construction
of the Na Dene proto languages.His analaysis could imply that the
modern Na Dene languages are derived from the ancient Yeniseni
language.His study also revealed that the Haida people of Prince
Charlotte Islands do not speak a language,which is derived from
Yeniseni.
Some linguists [S Starostin] have speculated that the Basque,
Caucasian,Burushaski,Sino-Tibetan,Yeniseni,Na Dene,Sumerian
and Etruscan language families might have their origins in the
Dene Caucasian family of language,that might have been used
in Eurasia ca 40-20Ka [conjectural].The survival of an ancient
tongue can occur among populations,that have been relatively
physically and/or culturally isolated for a long period of time.It
would undoubtly have received significant modification over time
Q Medhi [2001] constructed a genetic tree from numerous micro-
satellite markers,which indicated,that the Basque had a closer
genetic relationship to the Hunza than to the four other Pakistan
populations that were analyzed.The Hunza live in a high Himalaya
valley and speak Burashaski [article not sighted from L Cavilli
Sforza,2001].
A Y chromosome sample of 48 Ket males had a 93.8% frequency
of haplogroup Q [T Karafect et al,2002],which is the highest per-
centage in Siberia.Q is probably an ancestor of QM3,which is
prevalent among populations,who speak a Na Dene language [T
Shurr,2004] .However the Ket mtDNA haplogroups are mainly C,F
and U.Haplogroup A2 dominates the Na Dene speakers,[ibid].E
Starikovskaya et al [2005] sequenced the complete mtDNA of one
Ket female,with subhaplogroup A1.A2 probably split from A1 in
Beringia before it was introduced to North America.It is also
present among the Chukchi.MtDNA U4 has its highest frequency
[28.9%] among the Ket, [O Derbeneva,2001].Subhaplogroup U4
could be indicative of an Upper Palaeolithic European remnant
population just east of the Ural Mountains,[ibid et al,2002].Since
the Ket are a patriarch society,the female genes will exhibit far
greater variation temporally than the male Y chromesomes.
Ancestors of the Yeniseni might have introduced their language
to North America [speculation].