Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2014 number

The article deals with the materials of Martin Sauer, a secretary and interpreter in the North-Eastern Geographic and Astronomical Expedition (1785-1795 ) under I.I. Billings and G.A Sarychev’s command. These sources are introduced and studied for the first time in historiography. Martin Sauer;s materials concerning physical geography of Western Siberia and Yakutia were included in his book published in Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy and other European countries but never in Russia. They fill up the gaps in scientific works written by the expedition commanders and participants. The analysis of Sauer’s geographical information has shown that the traveler observed, collected and recorded the new data concerning the topsoil, the topography, the water bodies, the climate, the wildlife, and other components of natural complexes in various regions of Western Siberia and Yakutia. Having summarised the collected data he proposed physiographic regionalization of the regions. Using the method of regionalization, one of the main methods in physical geography, Sauer determined location of natural zones of the researched regions with good accuracy and ascertained the influence of terrain relief on the nature of the region (altitudinal zonality). This leads to a conclusion that Sauer’s scientific work is an actual source on the history of geographical research in Siberia snd on the history of development of physical geography as a science. The article also describes M. Sauer’s book as the main source of information about Billings and Sarychev’s expedition in Europe, shows its geopolitical significance for Russia.