The Asan or Assan were a Yeniseian speaking, hunter-fisherer people in

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

, distinct from the Kotts. In the 18th and 19th centuries they were assimilated by the Evenki and

Russians Russians ( ) are an East Slavs, East Slavic ethnic group native to Eastern Europe. Their mother tongue is Russian language, Russian, the most spoken Slavic languages, Slavic language. The majority of Russians adhere to Eastern Orthodox Church ...

. They spoke the

Assan language Assan () is an extinct Yeniseian language spoken to the south of Krasnoyarsk in Russia. It went extinct in the 18th century. It is similar enough to the Kott language that it can be regarded as a dialect of it, but the Assan identified as a separ ...

, closely related to, and can be considered a dialect of, Kott. The Assans, after their migration down the Yenisei river, settled around the and Biryusa rivers. By the time of the publication of the

Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary The ''Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopaedic Dictionary'' (35 volumes, small; 86 volumes, large) is a comprehensive multi-volume encyclopaedia in Russian. It contains 121,240 articles, 7,800 images, and 235 maps. It was published in the Russian Em ...

, there were less than 100 scattered families left of them, and they had been Turkicized. The village , founded in 1897, bears their name.

References

Sources

*Wixman, Ronald. ''The Peoples of the USSR: An Ethnographic Handbook''. (Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc, 1984) p. 14 Historical ethnic groups of Russia Indigenous peoples of Siberia {{Ethnic-stub