Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
Kamchadal
Kamchadal original inhabitants of the Kamchatka peninsula. Theirs was a substantial hunter-gatherer and fishing society with up to fifty thousand natives inhabiting the peninsula before they were decimated by the Cossacks in the eighteenth century.
So much "intermarriage" took place between the natives and the Cossacks that 'Kamchadal' now refers to the majority mixed population and the term Itelmens is reserved for persisting speakers of the original Kamchadal language (about a thousand).
The Kamchadal language (ethnonym: Itelmen) is distantly related to Chukchi and Koryak, and together they form the Chukotko-Kamchatkan language family. A. P. Volodin has published a grammar of the language.
10-26-2009 08:16:03
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The contents of this article is licensed from www.wikipedia.org under the GNU Free Documentation License. Click here to see the transparent copy and copyright details