Altai Mountains

[1] The local economy is based on bovine, sheep, horse husbandry, hunting, agriculture, forestry, and mining.

Altai is derived from underlying form *altañ "gold, golden" (compare Old Turkic 𐰞𐱃𐰆𐰣 altun "gold, golden") with coda -ñ underlying the -n & -y correspondence among cognates in different Turkic languages & dialects (e.g. qōñ ~ qoy "sheep", Qitan ~ Qitay "Khitans", etc.

They are also called Алтай таулары or التاي تاۋلارى in Kazakh; Altajskije gory (Алтайские горы) in Russian; Altay Taghliri (ىالتاي تاغلىرى‎ or Алтай Тағлири) in Uyghur; ā'ěrtài shānmài in Chinese (阿尔泰山脉 simplified, 阿爾泰山脈 traditional, or اَعَرتَىْ شًامَىْ in Xiao'erjing); and Arteː shanmeː (Артэ Шанмэ) in Dungan.

Numerous spurs, striking in all directions from the Sailughem mountains, fill up the space between that range and the lowlands of Tomsk.

The Altai, seen from this valley, presents the most romantic scenes, including the small but deep Kolyvan Lake at an altitude of 360 m (1,180 ft), which is surrounded by fantastic granite domes and towers.

The high valleys farther north, on the same western face of the Sailughem range, are but little known, their only visitors being Kyrgyz shepherds.

[4] The Ek-tagh or Mongolian Altai, which separates the Khovd basin on the north from the Irtysh basin on the south, is a true border-range, in that it rises in a steep and lofty escarpment from the Dzungarian depression (470–900 m (1,540–2,950 ft)), but descends on the north by a relatively short slope to the plateau (1,150–1,680 m (3,770–5,510 ft)) of north-western Mongolia.

East of 94° E the range is continued by a double series of mountain chains, all of which exhibit less sharply marked orographical features and are at considerably lower elevations.

[4] The five highest mountains of the Altai are: The Altai-Sayan ecoregion is located at the intersection of the Central Asian and Siberian faunal provinces.

The Altai mountains are home to a diverse fauna, because of its different habitats, like steppes, northern taigas and alpine vegetation.

[6] The Tien Shan dhole (Cuon alpinus hesperius) (a northwestern subspecies of the Asiatic wild dog) also lives there.

[12] In addition the mix of mammals has remained largely the same, with a few exceptions such as extinct mammoths, making it one of the few places on earth to retain an ice age fauna.

Neanderthal bones and tools made by Homo sapiens have also been found in the Denisova Cave, making it the only place in the world where all three hominids are known to have lived.

[15] The Altai Mountains have been identified as being the point of origin of a cultural enigma termed the Seima-Turbino Phenomenon[16] which arose during the Bronze Age around the start of the 2nd millennium BC and led to a rapid and massive migration of peoples from the region into distant parts of Europe and Asia.

Evidence to support the claims includes several cave petroglyphs within the Altai Mountains in modern China that depict human figures on skis that are chasing after an ibex.

The incident arose from the death of several Russian VIPs in a helicopter crash early in 2009, purportedly on a poaching excursion.

Rock types in the mountains are typically granites and metamorphic schists, and some are highly sheared near to fault zones.

This earthquake and its aftershocks devastated much of the region, causing $10.6 million in damage (USGS) and wiping out the village of Beltir.