The Discoverers of the Mammoth archipelago

Three groups of islands of the New Siberian archipelago — the southern (Lyakhovsky), the middle (Anzhu), and the northern (De Long) ones — following E. V. Toll, who added lustre to them and laid down his life for them, are often and deservedly called «Mammoth Islands». The surrounded shallow waters of the Laptev and East Siberian seas freeze for 10 months a year; the summers are very short and winters are long; temperatures are low, and strong winds are permanent. In such environmental conditions, the bones of huge animals that constantly come to the surface of the earth boggle the mind and resemble a completely diff erent climate of this area in the distant past. The article is devoted to the review of the fi rst stage of the geographical development of one of the most inaccessible and poorly studied archipelagos of the Arctic Ocean, the New Siberian Islands. The visible processes of surface transformation and the imperfection of the previous research methods, on the one hand, explain the fantastic halo of the discovery, and on the other hand, suggest the possibility and need for more active research of the natural model, which makes it possible to study the interconnected natural and social processes of the present time.

, New Siberian archipelago, discoverers and fishers, new and disappearing islands, sovereign expeditions, Dmitry Laptev Strait, Nikita Shalaurov, Sannikov land, Eduard Toll, modern research