Beginning of the XXth century

The State Seal of Ivan the Terrible (1583)

Fragment. The Siberian land emblemon the State Seal of Ivan the Terrible.

For the first time russian cronicals mention "the Siberian Land" in 1406. This state originated on the West-Sibebirian plane as a result of a break-up of the Chingis Khan's empire. In the middle of the XVIth century the Siberian empire streched from the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains to the Ob middle reaches.

The present-day Altai Territory was situatd outside this country. Nearly no records are cept about the tribes, who lived there in the XVth-XVIth century. Nor there are trustworthy archeological finds, dating back to that period. But we can hardly make a mistake supposing that in the Upper Ob-side surrounded by the Ob and the Irtish there were cattle-breeders at that time. Apparently this people was mainly Turcik-speaking, although the records of some encampments of Mongolian-speaking "oirats"(old mongolian tribes, or "kalmik", as the Russians called them) on borders of the XVIth-XVIIth century are mentioned. The basis of this "oirat union", formed at the end of the XIVth century, was the west-mongolian community of the tribes. We can't say for certain, where the North- Western border of the settlements of the oirat tribes at the beginning or in the middle of the XVIth century lay, when they started the economic exploration of the Ob-Irtish planes, and if this natural habitat adjoined the Siberian empire. In the scientific literature there is an opinion that oirats could move their nomad encampments to the North approximately to the middle of the river Om and the present-day Novosibirsk only at the end of the XVIth century, with the doom of the Siberian empire, fostering them.

The events at the end of the XVIth century, when the doom of the Khan Kuchum empire was caused by the russian service troops, sent from the Ural Mountains, became a turning-point in the history of sibirian regions and its people. The russian possessions, which were reflected on the political map of the Northern Asia, appeared and started growing rapidly. It influenced the destiny of many siberian generations and it also considerably predetermined the charakter of the history of the Siberia and the Altai Territory.

Among the emblems of the lands pertaining to the Russian Federation there was "the Siberian Seal" with the oldest russian symbol - image of an arrow - drawn on it.