Here you can find out about the key names of our region, mountain. But this name combines a common place and its name Ural.
The name Ural itself has a very controversial origin. It is clear that this is not a Russian word. There are two main versions origin of the word “Ural”. The first Mansi version of the origin of the name compares the name Ural with the Mansi “ur” (mountain). The second version considers the borrowing of a toponym from the Bashkir language. In the Bashkir language, the toponym “Ural” is perceived as very ancient, probably dating back to the Proto-Turkic state. It should be associated with the head. Ur ~ Old Turkic. *ör “height, eminence.”
Before the adoption of the name “Ural” in the Russian Empire from the middle of the 18th century. these mountains had different names. The first mentions in Russian records of the Ural Mountains go under the name "Stone" date back to the 17th century. This name was most likely determined by the indigenous inhabitants of these places, Khanty, Mansi, Germans (Samoyeds), etc. In their languages they call their land “Stone”. Most likely, the Russians, in contact with them, simply adopted the meaning. This name for the mountains has been preserved in remote areas of the northern Urals to this day. It should also be noted that the northern Urals from the 11th century. called “Ugra”.The name given in Europe is also known. In 1549 In the city of Vienna, Sigismund Herberstein’s book “Notes on Muscovy” was published. In his book, the author names the mountains east of Pechora “Belt of Peace”. In the XVI-XVII centuries. Many maps appeared depicting the Ural Mountains. On the map of Muscovy by the Italian Baptiste Anezier, the mountains separating the basins of the Pechora and Ob rivers are called “Mountains called Earth belt". On the map of the Dutch cartographer Gerhard Mercator, the northern part of the Ural Mountains is called the Stone Belt, in the upper reaches of the Pechora and Northern Sosva rivers the mountains are called the “Great Belt”, the south is simply “Stone”.
The name “Ural” was brought into the Russian language by Tatishchev, who mentioned this name in his work. Initially, the Urals denoted the southern part of the Urals, then this name became increasingly popular and over time the entire mountain range began to be called that way. There are also references to names from later periods. Below are examples of names in different periods.
VII-VI centuries BC. Greece poem "Arimaspeia" title - Hyperboreans
II century AD Egypt Alexandria Greek Claudius Ptolemy names – Hyperborean, Riphean, Noros And Rimmikaiskie mountains. The Rimmikai Mountains are the prototype of the modern Southern Urals
X in.In Arabic sources the names are the countries of Visu and Yugra. Ugra was located in the northernmost part of the Ural Mountains.
1154 Arab geographer al-Idrisi in the book “Entertainment of the weary in wandering through the regions” - information about the mountains Askaruy And Mur-gar located in Bashkiria. This is the earliest reliable description of the mountains of the Southern Urals.
The ancients called the Urals the Riphean or Hyperborean mountains, medieval geographers - the Belt, the Stone, the Stone Belt, the Earth Belt, and the Russian pioneers, as a rule, called the Stone. This name, which until the 17th - 18th centuries was also used in official documents, is a translation from local languages: the Nenets call the Ural Igarka Pe (“Big Stones”), the Khanty - Kev (“Stone”), the Mansi — Nyor (“Stone”) , Komi - Iz (“Stone”).
The name Ural was first mentioned in Russian documents of the late 17th century, but it was only in the 18th century that it became firmly established in both business and colloquial language.
Many works have been written about the toponym Ural, but the issue has not been fully resolved. Two versions of the origin of this name have been seriously discussed for a long time - Finno-Ugric (Mansi) and Turkic.
The creators of the Finno-Ugric (Mansi) version were famous researchers of the Northern Urals E.K. Hoffman and M.A. Kovalsky. They compared the name Ural with the Mansi word ur - “mountain”. Already in our days, the Hungarian scientists B. Kalman and J. Guya developed the Mansi version and compared the word “Ural” with the Mansi ur ala - “top of the mountain.” Despite all the external convincingness of this version, it does not stand up to criticism, since the Mansi themselves call the Urals only Nyor - “Stone” and never use the expression ur ala - “top of the mountain” both in relation to the Urals as a whole and to individual mountains.
Supporters of the second version argue that the name Ural is in origin associated with the Turkic languages - Bashkir, Tatar, Kazakh. There is a lot for this version: the external signs of the word “Ural”, characteristic of Turkic languages, for example, the emphasis on the last syllable, and the name of the Ural-Tau watershed ridge, which stretched across the entire Bashkiria from the northeast, recorded by P.S. Pallas back in the 18th century to the SSW for almost 300 km, and, finally, the ancient forms of Aral(b)tova and Oral(b)tova mountain, recorded in the “Book of the Big Drawing” of 1627 and clearly related to the Southern Urals.
But there is no unity in the interpretation of the word. A number of researchers, starting with V.N. Tatishchev, believe that this oronym has the meaning “Belt” and connects it with the Turkic verb uralu, oralu - “to be girded.” This path agrees well with the data of physical geography, but does not fully correspond to the facts of Turkic vocabulary and grammar.
Other scientists compare the Bashkir name Aral Dingeze - Aral Sea ("Island Sea") and the already mentioned Aral Mountain, allowing for transfer by contiguity: after all, the southern part of the Ural ridge - the Mugodzhary mountain range - ends not far from the Aral Sea. Recently, I. G. Dobrodomov showed that the transition of the Aral to the Urals can be explained on the basis of the ancient Chuvash-Bulgar dialects, but another assumption has been made: the forms Aral(b)tova, Oral(b)tova mountain in the “Book of the Big Drawing” are erroneous, in fact must be the Ural Mountain.
Finally, geographer E.V. Yastrebov believes that the name Ural goes back to Bashkir folklore. Bashkir legends tell about Ural-batyr (“the hero of the Urals”), who bravely fought with the enemies of the Bashkir people - various spirits and monsters. But it is very likely that this beautiful legend is secondary and that it is not the name of the ridge that owes its origin to the name of the hero, but, on the contrary, the name of the hero was given by the name of the ridge.
One way or another, the assumption about the Turkic origin of the name Ural is more plausible than the Mansi version, although there is no complete clarity yet. That is why new explanations of this mysterious word are appearing.
Several years ago, Perm local historian E.N. Shumilov expressed the opinion that the toponym Ural is of Mongolian origin (see the Bolshaya Kama newspaper, 1978, No. 28). The original form of the name Ural, according to E. N. Shumilov, is Khural uul, that is, “Collection of mountains.” The Turks, who assimilated the Ural Mongols over time, adopted the name Khural uul from them and replaced the Mongolian uul with the identical Turkic tau - “mountain”. Later, the initial x dropped out and the Turkic name Ural-Tau arose.
It can be assumed that some Mongolian tribes lived in the Urals and that there may also be Mongolian elements in the Ural toponymy. But the “Gathering of Mountains” will not be Khural uul, but Uulyn khural, since in the Mongolian language the definition always comes before the defined (cf. uulyn nuruu - “mountain range”, literally “ridge of the mountain, mountains”). Therefore, Shumilov’s hypothesis faces a strong counterargument from the grammar of the Mongolian language.
And another assumption was made quite recently - about the Tungus-Manchu origin of the word “Ural”. It is based on the sound proximity of the oronym Ural and the Evenki geographical term ure - “mountain”. Since l in the Evenki language is a plural suffix, then, therefore, the word “Ural” should be interpreted simply as “Mountains”. The weakness of the Tungus-Manchu version lies primarily in the fact that it remains unclear how the Russians, moving from west to east, could have borrowed the name Ural from the Evenki, the inhabitants of Eastern Siberia.
It is difficult to predict what new hypotheses will emerge and what historical documents will be discovered. But most likely the name of the Ural range came from the south - from the Turkic languages.
To the history of the name Ural
About 600 million years ago, the Urals appeared as a tectonically calm country. Land prevailed. Shallow warm seas occupied small areas. The inhabitants of these seas were sponges, archaeoceates, and other now extinct organisms, the remains of which were preserved in sedimentary rocks.
In the Paleozoic era, active tectonic movements covered the eastern areas of the Paleo-Ural. Extended valleys (rifts), accompanied by deep faults, alternately form in different parts of this territory, as if pushing and expanding it. Volcanic activity is resuming. Volcanic belts cover vast areas. Most of the volcanoes were marine, so the products of volcanic activity (lavas, tuffs, bombs) were often mixed with sediments that accumulated in the same basins. The vast Ural paleoocean extended to the east for no less than 1500 km.
About 400 million years ago, volcanic islands were formed in this paleoocean, almost the same as today’s Kuril and Japanese islands. The remains of such an “island arc” can be observed today in the area of Magnitogorsk.
The toponymy of the Urals has long attracted the attention of scientists. Back in the 18th century. V.N. Tatishchev and P.S. Pallas tried to penetrate the secrets of the origin of the names of our region, sometimes with success, sometimes naively and helplessly.
The toponymic zoning of the Urals basically coincides with its traditional division into Northern, Middle and Southern. On the western slope of the Northern Urals the Komi toponymy dominates, on the eastern slope Mansi geographical names predominateIn the process of this work, significant differences were established between Komi and Mansi toponymy.
The Komi adopted Christianity in the 14th century, their toponymy went through many years of religious, cultural and linguistic filter, losing mainly pagan features and ancient imagery.
On the contrary, the Mansi became Christians relatively recently (18th century), while remaining pagans at heart. Hence the amazing brightness and imagery of Mansi toponyms, which contain valuable information about Mansi religion, mythology and history.
Thus, in the toponymy of various peoples of the world, mountains are named with the meaning “Old Man”. The sign of old age, antiquity, eternity of mountains in comparison with man is a semantic universal, which is also represented in Mansi toponymy, but in Mansi it has two ways of implementation.
In the first case, the semantic model “Old Man” undergoes a significant metamorphosis. The Ural range is divided into a kind of district. Each such district has its own Ner-Oika, i.e. "Old Man Ural" or "Master of the Urals", who must guard the Ural ridge and help the Mansi. Of course, he needs to make sacrifices. Moreover, one of these stone gods - at the top of Northern Sosva - was the main one, the rest obeyed him.
In another version, the antiquity of the mountains is emphasized by comparison with the events of the time of the Flood. At the same time, it turns out that the mountains are older, since the high peaks, according to beliefs, remained dry, and people and animals were saved there. During the flood, nine Mansi sought refuge on Mount Kholat-Syakhyl (“Mountain of the Dead”), but they died of hunger, hence the name.
Currently, the Mansi are reindeer herders who graze their herds on mountain pastures. It is clear that each mountain, pass, and rock received its own special designation. But what is striking: the main economic character - the deer - is almost not mentioned in toponymy, but names like Luv-Ner “Horse-Stone” and other similar oronyms are repeatedly noted. These names are associated with the horse cult characteristic of the Mansi, which reflects their former horse-breeding life, and in the past was also expressed in the sacrifice of a white or pinto horse, described in detail in pre-revolutionary ethnographic sources.
Hence the conclusion is that the Mansi, like their closest relatives the Hungarians, once lived to the south and were engaged in horse breeding, but then, under pressure from more powerful nomadic tribes, they moved north and eventually became reindeer herders. Another interesting point: many names of the rivers of the Northern Urals (Vishera, Lozva, etc.), and sometimes even the mountains, do not have Mansi etymologies. They clearly belong to some more ancient population, perhaps relatives of the modern Nenets living in the polar tundra. This also indicates that the Mansi are not aborigines, but came to the Northern Urals from other places.
In the Southern Urals we see a completely different picture. Turkic (Bashkir and Tatar) toponymy dominates here, which forms the top layer of names
The problem is created by quite numerous pre-Turkic names, approaches to “deciphering” which are seriously hampered by their processing in the Turkic environment. Meanwhile, the interpretation of pre-Turkic names can have radical consequences for the reconstruction of the linguo-ethnic map of the Southern Urals in antiquity. At one time, there is an active development and discussion of two difficult issues related to the origin of the substrate toponymy of the Southern Urals, namely the search for ancient Hungarian and Iranian toponymic relics in these places. A number of etymologies of substrate toponyms have been proposed, but in general the problem turned out to be very complex and there are no “breakthrough” studies in this area yet. However, there are quite a lot of facts, and one must hope that sooner or later the key to them will be found.
More significant are the results of studying the toponymy of the Middle Urals, which is characterized by an upper Russian-speaking layer and a fairly numerous, but very variegated and unevenly distributed pre-Russian substrate.
The Middle Urals, where the mountains are very low and the passes are sometimes, for example, near Yekaterinburg, completely invisible, did not present any obstacle for the nomads. In ancient times and in the Middle Ages it was a real passage yard. For this reason, in some places, especially in the middle part of the Trans-Urals between Tura and Iset, literally “fragments” of former toponymic systems have survived. Toponymy here is extremely difficult to research. The further north you go, the more homogeneous and transparent it is, since Russification occurred here recently.
1. Evidence has been obtained that in the northern part of the Middle Urals the Mansi replaced the ancient Khanty population. The name of the largest lake in our region - Indra - in the Tavdinsky region and such rivers as Lyalya and Ous are convincingly explained from the Khanty language. Moreover, there is reason to think that the ancient Ob-Ugric population, perhaps of the Khanty type, once (before the Turks) lived further to the south - between Tura and Pyshma. In any case, such names as Neiva, Pyshma, Tagil and some others are best explained from the Khanty language.
2. A powerful wedge of Komi names has been identified, running from the Ural Range to the east. Its base is a conditional line that connects the sources of the South Sosva and Neiva, and the tip is directed to the confluence of Nitsa and Tura. These names (Kosva, Lobva, Sosva, Yasva, etc.) are distributed mainly in the same territory as Russian toponyms, formed from the name of the Zyryan people, as the Russians used to call the Komi (Zyryanka, Zyryansky, etc.) .
It was initially believed that both of them, starting from the time of Ermak, were spread by the Komi-Zyryan guides of the Russian warriors, but, more likely, this remarkable wedge was formed as a result of the resettlement of various Komi groups along with the Russians during the development of the Urals.
At the same time, it turned out that some names derived from the ethnonym Zyrjainen (from the Finnish syrjainen - “extreme”) may be associated not with the Komi, but with another people who lived along the Ustya River in the Northern Dvina basin - the mysterious Zyrya, whose name was moved to the 16th - 17th centuries. on the northern Komi (Permyaks or Permians of Russian chronicles). Who these Dvina Zyryans were has not yet been definitively established, perhaps they were relatives of the Volga Meryans or some branch of Chudi Zavolochskaya. One way or another, over time they were captured by the Russian resettlement movement, ended up in the Trans-Urals and became Russified.
Therefore, even today in the Russian North the river is called Ustya, the inhabitants of now Russian villages on the banks are called Zyr, a dense swampy forest is Lagmas, and in the Pyshminsky district of the Sverdlovsk region the village is called Ustyanka, another is Zyrany, there is also the Lagmas tract, although no one is knows what this word means.
It follows that the migration flow of the 17th - 18th centuries. captured not only Russians, but also some Finno-Ugric peoples who were at one or another stage of Russification. This allows us to understand how, among the purely Russian names of settlements like Ivanovka or Lipovka, names like Karely or Cheremisskoye appeared.
3. At present, it is possible to quite accurately designate the area of Turkic substrate toponymy in the territory of the Middle Urals, primarily Tatar, the northern border of distribution of which goes approximately from Shamar to Nizhny Tagil, then to Kushva, Verkhoturye and further along Tura, i.e. in some places it intersects with the southern border of the former Mansi area. There are many Turkic names in the vicinity of Yekaterinburg (Shartash, Bilimbay, etc.). But not all of them are actually Tatar. In the east of the Sverdlovsk region, the West Siberian-Tatar toponymy with its characteristic clatter certainly predominates (the ancient name of the village of Chubarovskoye in the Irbitsky region was Tsubartura in the Kazan-Tatar Chubartura - “Motley City”).
In the south of the region and in the vicinity of Yekaterinburg, a prominent place belongs to Bashkir names, which, however, are not easy to distinguish from Tatar ones. Finally, traces of the presence of the Volga Bulgarians were discovered in the Cis-Urals - energetic entrepreneurs and traders of their time, whose state was destroyed by the Mongols in the 13th century. The Volga Bulgarians are a special branch of the Turks; the modern Chuvash are considered their relatives. Indicative, in particular, is the nest of river names in the Bisert basin to the west of Druzhinino - Baryshan, Kirgishan, Chikishan, in the repeating part of which the Chuvash sana - “sleeve”, Volga-Bulgarian shan - “sleeve”, “channel”, “tributary” are recognized. .
A. K. Matveev
TOPONYMY OF THE URAL AS A MONUMENT OF LANGUAGE AND HISTORY
(News of the Ural State University.
- Ekaterinburg, 2001. - No. 19.)
In Bashkir mythology, the most powerful hero is the Ural Batyr. Once, in a fierce battle with the azhda dragon, he extracted living water from the spring of immortality. He could drink it himself to gain eternal life. But Ural Batyr sprinkled this water around, granting immortality to nature. And when he died, people built a high mound over his grave, from which the Ural Mountains were formed.
The batyr, the ancient legend continues, had many beautiful sons and daughters. The eldest daughter took after her father - courageous, strong, strong-willed. The Ural Batyr named her Idel and, when the time came, married her to the foreign batyr Valdai.
In the old days, Turkic-speaking peoples called the Volga Idel. Let me ask the reader, what does the Volga have to do with the Urals? Every schoolchild knows where it flows today, where its beginning and end are. But not everyone will believe that once the source of the Volga was really located on the slopes of the Urals, only at the Zhigulevsky Gate the ancient bed of the great river approximately coincided with the current one. The version about the Ural origin of the Volga is confirmed by modern geological research.
Ural-Batyr kept his youngest, most beloved daughter, Agidel, with him. Trusting and simple, a spoiled girl and a minx - the light-eyed Agidel was his joy and consolation. She remained to live in her father’s house, behind the long wall of the Ural-Tau ridge. Living water from the spring of immortality has mixed with her water, and the river runs, flows, splashes, remaining as bright-eyed and young as it was thousands of years ago. And its upper reaches - magnificent royal palaces erected by nature - attract tourists from all over the country. “Ural-batyr” (Bashk. Ural batyr) is a Bashkir folk epic.
The Belaya River was named so for a reason - the water in it is very light, which is especially noticeable when it flows into the Kama. Here it does not immediately mix with the darker, yellowish-brown water of the Kama. At a distance of several hundred meters, two rivers flow in streams of different colors in the same channel.
Previously, on ancient maps, the Volga was drawn not as it is now, but along the bed of the Kama and further along the Belaya. Perhaps there were geographical misconceptions of that time, or perhaps there were some reasons for this.
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The Urals were finally annexed to Muscovite Rus' in the 16th century (but were developed earlier), South Ural Bashkiria even later.
The Turks call the mountains Tau, and the Mansi call them Ner. The Russians who came to the Urals had a tendency to name the mountainous country in their own way; they called the Urals - Stone. Until the 18th century, “to go to Siberia” for Russians sounded like “to go beyond the Stone.” The competition between two toponyms (Kamen and Ural) ended with the victory of the latter.
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Often sources on the topic of the article report that the most ancient mountains on planet Earth are the Ural Mountains. But the Urals have competitors in this topic...
It is interesting that ancient geographers divided the Ural Mountains into different sections. For example:
- the middle Urals were called Rimnus,
- northern – Hyperborean mountains,
- and Southern - Noros.
As for the oldest surviving chronicle of Rus', the well-known “Tale of Bygone Years,” the modern Ural Mountains are called the Poyasovo, Bolshoy Kamen, or Earth Belt.
Initially, the word “Ural” in Rus' was applied only to the territory of the Southern Urals. The 19th century researcher V.N. Shishonko noted that the “Ural” included the area where the Zlatoustvo factories stood, as well as areas a little to the south and a little to the north.” Naturally, the peaks of Taganay were also among the original “Ural” mountains.
We owe the modern perception of what and where the Ural Mountains are to Vasily Tatishchev. For this entire gigantic mountain belt, it was he who firmly established the name “Ural”. Having learned that local residents have since ancient times called their native mountains “Ural”, and their country “Ural ile” (“country of the Urals”), he decided to give this name to the entire mountain range stretching over 2600 kilometers. And soon, in business as well as colloquial speech, the entire “stone belt” turned into the “Ural Mountains.”
However, it is perhaps fair that it was the southern part of the Urals that gave its name to the entire huge mountain range. It is here that you can fully experience the beauty and diversity of the Ural nature with its characteristic features: an abundance of mountains and lakes, a variety of climatic zones, landscapes, as well as a variety of flora and fauna. And it is symbolic that it is the fabulous mountains of Taganay that are the first, “truly” Ural mountains. Now Taganay is a national park, access to which is limited.
By the way, the indigenous peoples of the Urals have other traditional names for the Ural Mountains:
- the Komi called them “Iz”,
- Mansi - Nyor,
- Khanty-Kev,
- Nenets - Ngarka Pe
Also, as part of the Ural Mountains, on the territory of the Chelyabinsk region, there is the oldest mountain... on the planet (!)? The name of the mountain is simple - Karandash, it is located in the Kusinsky district. According to preliminary estimates, its age is 4.2 billion years (for comparison: the age of planet Earth is approximately 4.6 billion).
This mountain was once much higher. And today its height is some 600 meters. This is everything that was not destroyed by air, water and wind. Most of her “peers” have long been destroyed by time.
Mount Karandash is unique only because of its age, but also because it consists of the most ancient and rare stone, izrandite. It is practically impossible to meet him on the planet. This is an almost black rock, which in composition is closer to the earth's mantle than to the earth's crust.
But let's move to Canada
Scientists have determined the age of the rocks located near the Eskimo village Nuvvuagittuk, is equal 4.3 billion years old. This mountain formation received its name from the same Eskimo village - Nuvvuagittuk.
The Ural Mountains are a ridge on the border of Europe and Asia, as well as a natural border within, to the east of which are Siberia and the Far East, and to the west is the European part of the country.
BELT MOUNTAINS
In the old days, for travelers approaching the Urals from the east or west, these mountains really seemed like a belt that tightly intercepted the plain, dividing it into the Cis-Urals and Trans-Urals.
The Ural Mountains are a mountain range on the border of Europe and Asia, stretching from north to south. In geography, it is customary to divide these mountains according to the nature of the relief, natural conditions and other features into Pai-Khoi, Polar Urals, Subpolar.
Northern, Middle, Southern Urals and Mugod-Zhary. It is necessary to distinguish between the concepts of the Ural Mountains and the Urals: in a broader sense, the territory of the Urals includes the areas adjacent to the mountain system - the Urals, Cis-Urals and Trans-Urals.
The relief of the Ural Mountains consists of a main watershed ridge and several side ridges separated by wide depressions. In the Far North there are glaciers and snowfields, in the middle part there are mountains with flattened peaks.
The Ural Mountains are old, about 300 million years old, and have been noticeably eroded. The highest peak is Mount Narodnaya, approximately two kilometers high.
The watershed of large rivers runs along the mountain ridge: the rivers of the Urals belong mainly to the basin of the Caspian Sea (Kama with Chusovaya and Belaya, Ural). Pechora, Tobol and others belong to the system of one of the largest rivers in Siberia - the Ob. There are many lakes on the eastern slope of the Urals.
The landscapes of the Ural Mountains are predominantly forest; there is a noticeable difference in the nature of vegetation on different sides of the mountains: on the western slope there are mainly dark coniferous, spruce-fir forests (in the Southern Urals - in places mixed and broad-leaved), on the eastern slope there are light coniferous pine-larch forests. In the south there is forest-steppe and steppe (mostly plowed).
The Ural Mountains have long been of interest to geographers, including from the point of view of their unique location. In the era of Ancient Rome, these mountains seemed so distant to scientists that they were seriously called Riphean, or Riphean: literally translated from Latin - “coastal”, and in the expanded sense - “mountains at the edge of the earth”. They received the name Hyperborean (from the Greek “extreme northern”) on behalf of the mythical country of Hyperborea; it was used for a thousand years, until in 1459 the world map of Fra Mauro appeared, on which the “end of the world” was shifted beyond the Urals.
It is believed that the mountains were discovered by the Novgorodians in 1096, during one of the campaigns to Pechora and Ugra by a squad of Novgorod ushkuiniks, who were engaged in fur fishing, trade and collection of yasak. The mountains did not receive any name then. At the beginning of the 15th century. Russian settlements appear on the upper Kama - Anfalovsky town and Sol-Kamskaya.
The first known name of these mountains is contained in documents from the turn of the 15th-16th centuries, where they are called Stone: this is how any large rock or cliff was called in Ancient Rus'. On the “Big Drawing” - the first map of the Russian state, compiled in the second half of the 16th century. — The Urals are designated as Big Stone. In the XVI-XVIII centuries. The name Belt appears, reflecting the geographical position of the mountains between two plains. There are such variant names as Big Stone, Big Belt, Stone Belt, Stone of the Big Belt.
The name “Ural” was originally used only for the territory of the Southern Urals and was taken from the Bashkir language, in which it meant “height” or “elevation.” By the middle of the 18th century. the name “Ural Mountains” is already applied to the entire mountain system.
ENTIRE PERIODAL TABLE
This figurative expression is resorted to whenever it is necessary to give a short and colorful description of the natural resources of the Ural Mountains.
The antiquity of the Ural Mountains created unique conditions for the development of mineral resources: as a result of long-term destruction by erosion, the deposits literally came to the surface. The combination of energy sources and raw materials predetermined the development of the Urals as a mining region.
Since ancient times, the mining of iron, copper, chrome and nickel ores, potassium salts, asbestos, coal, precious and semi-precious stones - Ural gems - has been carried out here. From the middle of the 20th century. Oil and gas fields are being developed.
Russia has long developed the lands adjacent to the Ural Mountains, occupying Komi-Permyak towns, annexing Udmurt and Bashkir territories: in the middle of the 16th century. After the defeat of the Kazan Khanate, most of Bashkiria and the Kama part of Udmurtia voluntarily became part of Russia. A special role in consolidating Russia in the Urals was played by the Ural Cossacks, who received the highest permission to engage in free arable farming here. The Stroganov merchants laid the foundation for the purposeful development of the riches of the Ural Mountains, having received from Tsar Ivan IV a charter for the Ural lands “and what lies in them.”
At the beginning of the 18th century. Large-scale factory construction began in the Urals, driven by the needs of both the economic development of the country and the needs of the military departments. Under Peter I, copper smelters and iron foundries were built here, and subsequently large industrial centers were formed around them: Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Perm, Nizhny Tagil, Zlatoust. Gradually, the Ural Mountains found themselves in the center of the largest mining region in Russia, along with Moscow and St. Petersburg.
During the Soviet era, the Urals became one of the industrial centers of the country, the most famous enterprises being the Ural Heavy Engineering Plant (Uralmash), the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant (ChTZ), and the Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Plant (Magnitka). During the Great Patriotic War, industrial production was exported to the Urals from the German-occupied territories of the USSR.
In recent decades, the industrial importance of the Ural Mountains has noticeably decreased: many deposits are almost exhausted, and the level of environmental pollution is quite high.
The bulk of the local population lives in the Ural economic region and in the Republic of Bashkortostan. In the more northern regions, belonging to the North-Western and West Siberian economic regions, the population is extremely sparse.
During the industrial development of the Ural Mountains, as well as the plowing of the surrounding lands, hunting and deforestation, the habitats of many animals were destroyed, and many species of animals and birds disappeared, among them the wild horse, saiga, bustard, little bustard. Herds of deer that previously grazed throughout the Urals have now migrated deeper into the tundra. However, thanks to the measures taken to protect and reproduce the fauna of the Urals, it was possible to preserve brown bear, wolf, wolverine, fox, sable, ermine, and lynx in the reserves. Where it has not yet been possible to restore populations of local species, acclimatization of introduced individuals is being successfully carried out: for example, in the Ilmensky Nature Reserve - sika deer, beaver, deer, raccoon dog, American mink.
ATTRACTIONS OF THE URAL MOUNTAINS
Natural:
■ Pechora-Ilychsky, Visimsky, “Basegi”, South Ural, “Shulgan-Tash”, Orenburg steppe, Bashkirsky reserves, Ilmensky mineralogical reserve.
■ Divya, Arakaevskaya, Sugomakskaya, Kungurskaya Ice and Kapova caves.
■ Rocky outcrops of the Seven Brothers.
■ Devil's Settlement and Stone Tents.
■ Bashkir National Park, Yugyd Va National Park (Komi Republic).
■ Hoffmann Glacier (Saber Ridge).
■ Azov-mountain.
■ Alikaev Stone.
■ Olenyi Ruchi Natural Park.
■ Blue Mountains Pass.
■ Rapid Revun (Iset River).
■ Zhigalan waterfalls (Zhigalan River).
■ Alexandrovskaya Sopka.
■ Taganay National Park.
■ Ustinovsky Canyon.
■ Gumerovskoe Gorge.
■ Red Key spring.
■ Sterlitamak shihans.
■ Krasnaya Krucha.
■ The Sterlitamak Shihans in Bashkiria are ancient coral reefs that formed at the bottom of the Perm Sea. This amazing place is located near the city of Sterlitamak and consists of several high cone-shaped hills. A unique geological monument whose age is more than 230 million years.
■ The peoples of the Urals still use the names of the Urals in their languages: Mansi - Nyor, Khanty - Kev, Komi - Iz, Nenets - Pe or Igarka Pe. In all languages it means the same thing - “stone”. Among Russians who have long lived in the north of the Urals, a tradition has been preserved to also call these mountains Kamen.
■ The bowls of the St. Petersburg Hermitage are made from Ural malachite and jasper, as well as the interior decoration and altar of the St. Petersburg Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood.
■ Scientists have not yet found an explanation for the mysterious natural phenomenon: the Uvildy, Bolshoi Kisegach and Turgoyak lakes have unusually clear water in the Ural lakes. In neighboring lakes it is completely muddy.
■ The top of Mount Kachkanar is a collection of bizarrely shaped rocks, many of which have their own names. The most famous of them is Camel Rock.
■ In the past, the richest deposits of high-quality iron ore of the Magnitnaya, Vysoka and Blagodat mountains, known throughout the world and included in all geology textbooks, are now either demolished or turned into quarries hundreds of meters deep.
■ The ethnographic image of the Urals was created by three streams of migrants: Russian Old Believers who fled here in the 17th-18th centuries, peasants transferred to the Ural factories from the European part of Russia (mainly from the modern Tula and Ryazan regions) and Ukrainians brought in as additional labor at the beginning XIX century
■ In 1996, the Yugyd Va National Park, together with the Pechora-Ilychsky Nature Reserve, with which the park borders in the south, was included in the list of UNESCO World Natural Heritage sites under the name “Virgin Komi Forests”.
■ Alikaev Stone - a 50-meter rock on the Ufa River. The second name of the rock is Maryin Rock. The TV movie “Shadows Disappear at Noon” - about life in the Ural outback - was filmed here. It was from the Alikaev stone, according to the plot of the film, that the Menshikov brothers threw off the collective farm chairman Marya Krasnaya. Since then, the stone has a second name - Maryin Rock.
■ Zhigalan waterfalls on the Zhigalan River, on the eastern slope of the Kvarkush ridge, form a cascade 550 m long. With a river length of about 8 km, the height difference from source to mouth is almost 630 m.
■ Sugomakskaya Cave is the only cave in the Ural Mountains, 123 m long, formed in marble rock. There are only a few such caves in Russia.
■ The Red Key spring is the most powerful water source in Russia and the second largest in the world after the Fontaine de Vaucluse spring. The water flow of the Krasny Klyuch spring is 14.88 m3/sec. A landmark of Bashkiria with the status of a hydrological natural monument of federal significance.
GENERAL INFORMATION
Location: between the East European and West Siberian plains.
Geographical division: Pai-Khoi ridge. Polar Ural (from Konstantinov Kamen to the headwaters of the Khulga River), Subpolar Ural (segment between the Khulga and Shchugor rivers), Northern Ural (Voy) (from the Shchugor River to Kosvinsky Kamen and Mount Oslyanka), Middle Ural (Shor) (from Mt. Oslyanka to the Ufa River) and the Southern Urals (the southern part of the mountains below the city of Orsk), Mugodzhary ().
Economic regions: Ural, Volga, North-Western, West Siberian.
Administrative affiliation: Russian Federation (Perm, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Kurgan, Orenburg, Arkhangelsk and Tyumen regions, Udmurt Republic, Republic of Bashkortostan, Komi Republic), Kazakhstan (Aktobe region).
Large cities: Yekaterinburg—1,428,262 people. (2015), Chelyabinsk - 1,182,221 people. (2015), Ufa - 1,096,702 people. (2014), Perm - 1,036,476 people. (2015), Izhevsk - 642,024 people. (2015), Orenburg—561,279 people. (2015), Magnitogorsk - 417,057 people. (2015), Nizhny Tagil - 356,744 people. (2015), Kurgan - 326,405 people. (2015).
Languages: Russian, Bashkir, Udmurt, Komi-Permyak, Kazakh.
Ethnic composition: Russians, Bashkirs, Udmurts, Komi, Kazakhs.
Religions: Orthodoxy, Islam, traditional beliefs.
Monetary unit: ruble, tenge.
Rivers: the Caspian Sea basin (Kama with Chusovaya and Belaya, Ural), the Arctic Ocean basin (Pechora with Usa; Tobol, Iset, Tura belong to the Ob system).
Lakes: Tavatui, Argazi, Uvildy, Turgoyak, Bolshoye Shchuchye.
CLIMATE
Continental.
Average January temperature: from -20°С (Polar Urals) to -15°С (Southern Urals).
Average July temperature: from + 9°C (Polar Urals) to +20°C (Southern Urals).
Average annual precipitation: Subpolar and Northern Urals - 1000 mm, Southern Urals - 650-750 mm.
Relative humidity: 60-70%.
ECONOMY
Minerals: iron, copper, chromium, nickel, potassium salts, asbestos, coal, oil.
Industry: mining, ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, heavy engineering, chemical and petrochemical, fertilizers, electrical engineering.
Hydroelectric power: Pavlovskaya, Yuma-guzinskaya, Shirokovskaya, Iriklinskaya hydroelectric power stations.
Forestry.
Agriculture: crop production (wheat, rye, garden crops), livestock farming (cattle, pig farming).
Traditional crafts: artistic processing of Ural gems, knitting of Orenburg down scarves.
Services: tourism, transport, trade.
