[citation needed] The cultural borders of the Koryaks include Tigilsk in the south and the Anadyr basin in the north.

Neighbors of the Koryaks include the Evens to the west, the Alutor to the south (on the isthmus of Kamchatka Peninsula), the Kerek to the east, and the Chukchi to the northeast.

[citation needed] The coastal people are called Nemelan (or Nymylan) meaning 'village dwellers', due to their living in villages.

[5] The earliest references to the name 'Koryak' were recorded in the writings of the Russian cossack Vladimir Atlasov, who conquered Kamchatka for the Tsar in 1695.

Anthropologists have speculated that a land bridge connected the Eurasian and North American continent during Late Pleistocene.

Scientists have suggested that people traveled back and forth between this area and Haida Gwaii before the ice age receded.

Their overlapping borders extended to the Nivkh areas in Khabarovsk Krai until the Evens arrived, and pushed them into their present region.

Salmon and other freshwater fish as well as berries and roots played a major part in the diet, as reindeer flesh did not contain some necessary vitamins and minerals, nor dietary fibre, needed to survive in the harsh tundra.

The men wore baggy pants and a hide shirt, which often had a hood attached to it, boots and traditional caps made of reindeer skin.

Snowshoes are made by lashing reindeer sinew and hide strips to a tennis racket-shaped birch bark or willow hoop.

He is considered to reside in Heaven with his family and when he wishes to punish mankind for immoral acts, he falls asleep and thus leaves man vulnerable to unsuccessful hunting and other ills.

[4] Big Raven myths are also found in Southeast Alaska in the Tlingit culture, and among the Haida, Tsimshian, and other natives of the Pacific Northwest Coast Amerindians.

The area they covered before Russian colonization was 301,500 km2 (116,400 sq mi), roughly corresponding to the Koryak Okrug, of which the administrative centre is Palana.