The Imperiia Project: a spatial history of the Russian EmpireMain MenuProjectsDashboardsData CatalogMapStoriesGalleriesGamesWho said history was boring?Teach Our ContentCiting the ProjectKelly O'Neilldc20b45f1d74122ba0d654d19961d826c5a557f5The Imperiia Project // Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University
Sketch Artist
12020-05-01T02:31:39-04:00Kelly O'Neilldc20b45f1d74122ba0d654d19961d826c5a557f598Famous voyager by day, pioneer in the art of ethnographic mapping by night.plain2020-05-05T16:31:46-04:001730Kelly O'Neilldc20b45f1d74122ba0d654d19961d826c5a557f5Tsar Peter I (Peter the Great) commissioned Vitus Bering to establish, beyond a shadow of a doubt, whether and how one could sail from the Pacific Ocean into the Arctic Sea. Bering's "First Kamchatka Expedition" brought him to the shores of Kamchatka via Tobolsk in 1728. Somehow he found time to make (or, more likely, call for the creation of) this map. It bears some of the earliest ethnographic depictions of the peoples of eastern Siberia. Working clockwise from the upper left, the seven peoples depicted are: Yakuts, nomadic Tungus (male and female), Koryaks, peoples of the Kurils, Chukchi, Kamchadals, and settled Tungus (male and female).