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Tinto Maps #22 - 11th of October 2024 - Mongolia, Manchuria and Eastern Siberia

Hello and welcome another week to the amazing world of Tinto Maps. This week we are covering a very wide area, as we will take a look at Mongolia, Manchuria and all Eastern Siberia. So, without much further ado, let’s get started.

Countries
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Here, clearly, the Yuán Dynasty of China controls much of the territory, while all of the Siberian expanses are “open” to colonization. Considering Manchuria, the Jurchen tribes posed a tricky question, as some of them were more settled and Chinese-influenced while others were more nomadic and pastoralist, and some were in between. Thus, we decided to represent the more settled tribes that would later confederate into the Manchu as separate countries vassals of Yuán, while there is also Jurchen population inside the borders of Yuán itself and the most nomadic of them represented as Society of Pops.

Societies of Pops
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And speaking of that, most of them are obviously concentrated in Manchuria and around the borders of the countries and coasts, while the more inhospitable places further into Siberia and Kamchatka are more sparsely populated and thus less organized.

Dynasties
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Nothing that wasn’t expected here, Borjigin dynasty keeps dominating another week. Concerning the Jurchen, currently none of them have scripted dynasties assigned and are generated instead.

Locations
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Provinces
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Areas
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Terrain
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The drier parts of the Gobi Desert in the Mongolian Plateau give way to the steppes and grasslands of Manchuria, while further into Siberia it gets dominated by mountains, hills, forests, and as one would expect from Siberia, cold.

Development
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Not much development in these parts either, and as I mentioned in last week’s Tinto Maps, the sudden change in development when entering China will have to be reviewed, as it’s currently too strong.

Natural Harbors
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Cultures
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Quite a varied cultural landscape, as these areas are populated by many different peoples, sometimes expanding through a wide area while others are more localized. On the other hand, the Mongolian Plateau is very much dominated by Mongolian culture.

Religions
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Very diverse religion distribution too, with Tengri, Shamanism, and local variations of it with Tungustic Shamanism (brown), Yukaghir Shamanism (light blue) and Chukchee Shamanism (purple). I have to say that we are currently going through a review of all the religions of the world defined as either “Animism” or “Shamanism”, so it is possible that there are some changes in this distribution in the future.

Raw Materials
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Very marked distribution of resources, with Mongolia and Manchuria rich in livestock and horses (as one would expect from the horse lords) while the forests of Siberia are full of fur and wild game and the northern coasts are a big source of ivory (from the world-famous arctic elephant herds, of course). However, the mountainous areas also include precious metals like gold and silver, so their colonization may thus prove quite beneficial. Another thing of note is that fish can be found abundantly not only along the coasts but also along the major rivers crossing Siberia.

Markets
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First of all, we have reverted back to the previous way of visualizing markets, as it was clear that the change we did to it was not in the good direction. We will keep testing and trying things, so this will probably not be the final view of it, but for now we reverted back to this version as we think it would be clearer to present. Having said that, these are areas with not much market presence, with the markets of Karakorum and Ilan Hala being the main ones, and the Chinese markets encroaching on the southern parts. Siberia doesn’t have any market of its own, so all of it has currently no access.

Population
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The only countries we have population to show here are the Jurchen ones, with the mighty Yuán ever encroaching on them. Concerning the populations of the locations, one thing I have to mention is that you will see many of them with the value of 150, that is the general default value that we used for the less populated areas of all eastern Siberia, where population estimates of the period don’t allow for much fine tuning. It is probably something that we will adjust.

And that is it for this week. Next week, after having been teasing it and slithering around its edges for a while now, it will be finally time to face the dragon, as we will showcase the entirety of China. Hope to see you all there, and as always very open (and grateful) to all your feedback.
 
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A few more observations eastwards from Krasnoyarsk towards the Angara basin.

Taseyevo - historic name after a local lord called TASEY. Should we use the Russian settlement name? Conversely, the local lord just happened to be here when the Russians came and invented the name. His name was immemorialized by accident, in the grand scheme of things.
IIansky - Ilanka, maybe? It was Ilanskaya originally. Basically, it's an adjective and all three gendered forms have been applied one day or another (because different words for town/village/hamlet have diverse genders in Russian). Ilanka would be a river name. Russian wiki also suggests that it was named after a local lord again: Ilan or OILAN.
Boguchany - Russian wiki suggests that the original Evenk term would be BOGUCHAN without the final -y. However, another (less reliable) source argues it should be BUKACHAN with a different meaning. No -y anyway.
Irkineieva - IRKINEYEVA (more consistent spelling); it seems to originate from a local lord's name, IRKINEY, which was morphed into russian names for settlement and river.
Manzaya - MANZYA (misspelling, extra letter). Alternative is Man'zha but the first one is dominant. In either case, it's a local word and has no meaning in Russian.
Chuva - CHUNA (misspelling)
Upper and Lower Angara - I propose using local villages or rivers;
Upper Angara -> YODARMA (Yedarma, Edarma - a left tributary and a village)
Lower Angara -> ILIM (the bigger right tributary a bit southwards) or KEUL' (an old village from 1690s)
Reka Tuba - reka is superfluous here, it means river in Russian. But in general, the more famous Tuba is to the south of Krasnoyarsk, not here as a tributary of the Ilim. This could be a fitting place for ILIMSK, the Russian fort - but no need for Ilim and Ilimsk together.
Ust-Kut - the Russian settlement on KUTA river.
Icheda - ICHYODA (it is spelt with -ё-, actually. it's a mining settlement but it is also a name of 2 rivers).
locations here are Evenk rivers but I couldn't recognise Sekili and Çamal. They sounded very turkic to my google.
 
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Going eastwards to Lena River and Irkutsk - I have accidentally come across a topographic dictionary but there are fewer Russian names to check.

Makarixa and Dyrashnichixa - MAKARIKHA and DYRASHNICHIKHA. These are Russian river names. They are not Yakut, so there is no reason to use X to represent the [h] sound here.
Yerema - a linguistic compromise between Russian YERYOMA and native Evenk YEREME. I would prefer the latter one.
Os'kino - it's a valid Russian settlement, but there's a larger native-named place between Khamakar downstream and Yerema upstream: Yerbogachyon, or NYERBEKECHEN, a current district capital.
Irkutsk-Kazachinskoye - there is Irkutsk further south, so unless there's another Kazachinskoye somewhere else I would propose to stick with shorter KAZACHINSKOYE.
Kuytun - English wiki suggests Buryat transliteration as KHÜITEN (with umlaut).
Staraya zima - ZIMA or ZEME. No point in using staraya (old) when there is no novaya (new). It's both a river and a village. It's adapted from local word zeme and doesn't originate in russian word zima (winter).
Zalari - ZALAR. It seems to be an earlier form which makes more sense in Buryat.
Cheremkhovo - ARANGATA is the Buryat name supplied by Mel'kheyev (1969), while wiki surmises that the name comes from buryat word Sheremkhe (Sheremxe?) but wiki references Mel'kheyev and that's not what he wrote.
Slyudyanka - maybe KULTUK. Slyudyanka is vastly more important on several levels (because it's bigger and because it refers directly to mica mining in the area) but Kultuk seems to originate earlier. It appears to be a common turkic term for a river bend or a small bay, so it may not even be original Buryat (may be a Tatar term brought by Russians).
Osenny - (OSENNIY) but I dislike it for the following reason; it does exist as a tributary of the Chuya between Angoya and Konkudera & Kamniga (which are very close along Mama River). And it has been a Soviet cluster of mining camps. The discussed area is in bottom left corner by the place called Gorno-Chuyskiy. I propose SYNNYR because it's a mountain range between two major S-N rivers here (Chuya and Mama). Angoya is separated by Upper Angara Range, and Synnyr goes roughly perpendicular northwards.
 
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Howdy! Wanted to quickly chime in on the conversation with the Ket. While it would be cool to have the Ket split into 2 groups (pompokol + ket) it definitely isn't necessarily needed. The Yeniseian peoples by this point had been significantly stunted. The main group I can think of that was a major Yeniseian power were the Jie people of the 4th century.

Ultimately, Siberia is a lot like Tibet and parts of Africa that are chock full of "unknown unknowns." There probably were at least a few highly divergent isolates that are long gone now but were hanging on by a thread in 1337, but obviously they can't do blood magic in the PDX foyer to summon them or something lol.

I am a MASSIVE sucker for strange isolated cultural groups but I think that with some edits and refinements, the distribution of small groups of people in Siberia is good enough to be an "acceptable fiction." -- though obviously the more the merrier and the more detailed the region is the better.
 
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Some little typos in the Areas map (besides Yakutsk Sea, which is really Okhotsk Sea).

1) Yupper Lena. - I think it's Upper Lena.
And it raises an issue of "Upper Lena" province being a part of the neighbouring area (Middle Lena, duh). Let's rename Upper Lena province into Middle Lena province.

2) Anabyr area and Anaabyr province. What's the point of different spelling here?

3) Krivoshchekovo province at the west edge of the map is called krivoshchYOkovo. (it has a "ё" instead of "e" in the middle).
 
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So I'm using the following article to identify mica mining locations and I have come up with 3.5 places to change a common resource into sand.
Russians prospected for mica on purpose: e.g., Tzar Peter mentioned it in his orders. Sheet mica was then used mostly as window panes.
Possible locations are colour-coded:

0) rivers Taseyeva, Kan and Barga, Kiya and Usol'ye (Angara basin, around Yeniseysk);
I haven't pinpointed this region on the map because the source says mica production fizzled out in just 16 years.
1) river Slyudyanka (south bank of Baikal). As the name suggests, it should contain mica resource instead of bland fish.
2) Mama-Chuya-Witym region. This was a major mica production region until right about the end of the game's timeframe (it lost to glass production gradually). There's a cluster of lumber locations; Chuya or maybe Witym could have sand instead.
3) Aldan region, with sites at rivers Eldmak, Tontora, Mamushkan, Zeya, Uchur, Gonam, Chara. They're inside the blue circle. I think. I hope. Because I just cannot see where these rivers are both on location & resource maps.

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I think the sites with Lesosibirsk ceramics correlate pretty well with the Yeniseian people.
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now im not an expert by any means and im not really making a substantive in depth suggestion like i have previously but i did see a video recently on youtube that depicted or showed a rather detailed and in depth depiction of Sakha polities in the Lena River valley in the late 15th century. is it possible if this could be applied earlier and anyone who has a stronger obsession than me in this and also more time investigate its historical authenticity?

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now im not an expert by any means and im not really making a substantive in depth suggestion like i have previously but i did see a video recently on youtube that depicted or showed a rather detailed and in depth depiction of Sakha polities in the Lena River valley in the late 15th century. is it possible if this could be applied earlier and anyone who has a stronger obsession than me in this and also more time investigate its historical authenticity?

View attachment 1272610

Do you want to open the can of worms that is Medieval Yakutia?
 
now im not an expert by any means and im not really making a substantive in depth suggestion like i have previously but i did see a video recently on youtube that depicted or showed a rather detailed and in depth depiction of Sakha polities in the Lena River valley in the late 15th century. is it possible if this could be applied earlier and anyone who has a stronger obsession than me in this and also more time investigate its historical authenticity?

View attachment 1272610

As a professional madman, I can tell you that all such videos are not completely historical. As a rule, researchers try to find all the messages about the research object. After that, they receive several dates where historicity is respected. The rest of the dates and the changes that occur on them are made up. The problem is that it is impossible to know for sure which dates correspond to historical reality and which do not. So they should not be perceived as reliable material, but they are an excellent starting point for research.