Reindeer People: Living With Animals and Spirits in Siberia

The Reindeer People: Living With Animals and Spirits in Siberia by Piers Vitebsky. Published by Houghton Mifflin Co, Boston, MA, 2005. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Hardbound. Paper DJ. Size 8vo (up to 9-1/2'' tall). Condition: Fine in Good DJ. 464 Pgs. ISBN 0618211888. LCCN 2005045994. Since the last Ice Age, the reindeer's extraordinary adaptation to cold has sustained human life over vast tracts of the earth's surface, providing meat, fur, and transport. Images carved into rocks and tattooed on the skin of mummies hint at ancient ideas about the reindeer's magical ability to carry the human soul on flights to the sun. These images pose one of the great mysteries of prehistory: the ''reindeer revolution,'' in which Siberian native peoples tamed and saddled a species they had previously hunted. Drawing on nearly twenty years of field work among the Eveny in northeast Siberia, the author shows how Eveny social relations are formed through an intense partnership with these extraordinary animals as they migrate over the swamps, ice sheets, and mountain peaks of what in winter is the coldest inhabited region in the world. Illustrated with black and white photographs. Description text copyright 2007 www.BooksForComfort.net. Item ID 14042.