Kumandins
The Kumandins are a Turkic Indigenous people of Siberia. They reside mainly in the Altai Krai and Altai Republic of the Russian Federation. They speak the Northern Altai Kumandin language.
According to the 1926 census, 6,335 Kumandins lived within the territory of Russia. In the 2010 census, the number was only 2,892, but possibly the 1926 census included some related peoples. Some Kumandins, living on the banks of the Biya River, from the Kuu River downstream, almost to the city of Biysk, and along the lower course of the Katun River, by 1969 were conflated with the Russians population.
In the Soviet years and until 2000, the authorities considered the Kumandins to be part of the Altai people. Currently, according to the List of minor [indigenous peoples of Russia|Resolution of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 255 dated March 24, 2000], as well as the Russian Census (2002), they are recognized as a separate ethnic group within indigenous small-numbered peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East. For ethnic rights protection was established the "Association of the Kumandin People Revival".
Origins
claimed that kuman- in the name of the Kumandins is identical in meaning to the names given to the Turkic people, Cumans-Kipchaks and Polovets.However, the of the Kumandins have varying origin myths; L. Potapov proposed that they were originally a federation of peoples from different backgrounds: nomadic steppe pastoralists, taiga hunters, deer pastoralists, and fishers.
By the 17th century, the Kumandins lived along the river Charysh, near its confluence with the river Ob. A subsequent relocation to the Altai was driven by their unwillingness to pay yasak to the Russian sovereign. N. Aristov linked the Kumandins – and the Chelkans – to the ancient Turks, "who in the 6th-8th CC AD created in Central Asia a powerful nomadic state, which received... the name Turkic Kaganate".
Potapov regarded the Kumandins as being related anthropologically to the peoples of the Urals, and suggested that they were less East Asian than the Altaians proper. This subjective impression has been borne out to an extent by genetic research.
Six have been identified:
| Kumandin names | Proposed ethnolinguistic links | Period | Note |
| Soo | possibly a proto-Turkic people; tribal names similar to Soo – the Sogo, Soko, Soo, and Soky – have been recorded among the Khakas and Yakuts | before 4th century | |
| Kubandy | possibly part of the Kangar confederation and/or Cumans | 7th century | |
| Tastar | possibly also part of the Kangar confederation, Cumans and/or Ases | 7th century | |
| Diuty | possibly Tele/Teleuts | 6th to 8th centuries | |
| Chabash | possibly Chuvash | unknown | |
| Ton | possibly a Nenets tribe, Tongjoan and/or Tongak | 12th century | - |
An ancient Turkic legend recorded in the Chinese annal mentions the origin of the Göktürks' ancestors from a possession or state named Suǒ, located "north of the Xiongnu country".
The name of the Ton is explained as an ethnonym that reflects their economic specialization, as a word meaning "deer" and "reindeer breeder". The remote ancestors of this Kumandy Ton were reindeer breeders, reflected in Kumandy hunting legends and fairy tales, for example about milking deer. The memory about breeding and milking reindeer belongs to some remote historical ancestors of a part of Kumandy; they can be explained by participation in the Kumandy ethnogenesis of the southern Nenets tribes, who cultivated riding deer, typically used not only for transport but also for food and dress.
Genetics
Genetically, the Kumandins are different from the neighboring Altai people, into which they were tried to be included in the Soviet years. They are genetically isolated not only from the southern, but also from the northern Altaians. This is evidenced by the complete absence of the variants of the Y chromosome haplogroups—R1a and Q—which are absolutely dominant in Altai. At the same time, the haplogroup R1b is widespread within them, and except for the Kumandins themselves, no one in Altai has found it in any quantity.By genetic research suggesting that most Kumandin males belong to Y-DNA haplogroups that are generally found in populations further to the west, such as R1b. However, a majority of mitochondrial DNA lines belonged to the North East Asian haplogroups C (mtDNA)|C] or D (mtDNA)|D] with also a large minority of west Eurasian lineages such as U5a1, H8, U4b1b, X2e, and T1a.
Culture
The Kumandins were originally hunters and animals living in the taiga were vital to the local subsistence economy. Around the 19th century, Kumandins took up picking cedar nuts as an additional economic activity.The traditional dwellings of the Kumandins included polygonal yurts made out of bark or log and topped with a conic bark roof. Other types of dwellings also included conic yurts made out of bark or perches.
Traditional Kumandin dress included short breeches, linen shirts, and single-breasted robes.