New Siberian Islands - History

History

The first news about the existence of the New Siberian Islands was brought by a Cossack Yakov Permyakov in the beginning of the 18th century. In 1712, a Cossack unit led by M. Vagin reached the Great Lyakhovsky Island. At the beginning of the 19th century, the islands were further explored by Yakov Sannikov, Matvei Gedenschtrom and others.

In 1809-1810 Yakov Sannikov and Matvei Gedenschtrom went to The New Siberian Islands on a cartographic expedition. Yakov Sannikov reported the sighting of a "new land" north of Kotelny in 1811. This became the myth of Zemlya Sannikova or "Sannikov Land".

In 1886 Baron Eduard von Toll, during his first visit to the New Siberian Islands thought that he had seen an unknown land north of Kotelny Island. He guessed that this was the so-called "Zemlya Sannikova".

Polar explorer and scientist Baron Eduard V. Toll paid a further visit to this island group in the spring of 1892, accompanied only by one Cossack and three natives. He traveled over the ice in sledges drawn by dogs and reached the south coast of Great Lyakhovsky Island. Along the southern coast of this island, Von Toll (1985), in one of his more important and interesting discoveries, found well preserved bones, ivory, peat, wood, and even a tree within 40 meter (130 feet) high sea cliffs that exposes Late Pleistocene sediments. These sediments are cemented by permafrost and have accumulated periodically over the last 200,000 years. These strata are described in greater detail in the Great Lyakhovsky Island page.