Yukaghir

Yukaghir is the remnant of a dialect continuum that once stretched across northeastern Siberia from the Lena to the mouth of the Anadyr. By 1337 its varieties included the tongues later recorded as Omok, Chuvan, Anaul and the two survivors, Tundra Yukaghir or Wadul of the lower Indigirka and Kolyma, and Forest or Kolyma Yukaghir, also called Odul, of the upper Kolyma.

Cossacks reached the Kolyma in 1643 and imposed fur tribute. Over the following two centuries epidemics, wars and raids shattered the clans: Anauls were nearly exterminated, many Yukaghirs merged into the Yakuts and Evens, and by the early 1800s Omok and Chuvan were dying out.

Its relationship to other families is unproven, though a distant link with Uralic has been argued. It had no writing of its own in this period, and its lore, including the crow epic, passed orally through clan shamans called alma.