Savans and Toys: Guessing Game Answers
Some figures are quite easy to recognize, while others are truly challenging! Here are the answers of who is who. Brown Bear Outer Manchuria (the Amur region of Russia, Приамурье), where the Nanai people live, is home to both the brown bear and the Asian black bear (also known as the moon bear or white-chested bear). However, Nanai bear savans were traditionally dedicated specifically to the brown bear.
Leopard More precisely, this figure represents the Amur leopard, native to the Russian Far East and northern China. A beautiful specie! When Joe made their guess, they thought it was a snow leopard, which actually lives in Central Asia.
Tiger This is the Siberian (Amur) tiger, which inhabits the Russian Far East, northern China, and possibly the Korean Peninsula. Today, its population is concentrated mainly in the Sikhote-Alin mountain region of the Far East. Do not confuse Sikhote-Alin with Sikachi-Alyan! The latter is a famous petroglyph site. And a small spoiler: one shamanic costume in our collection is decorated with tiger savans! We will definitely show it later.
Reindeer But which reindeer? There are two certain species live in the Far East. They are a caribou, well-known to everyone, and a manchurian wapiti, a rarer one. It is unclear which of these was depicted in the toy, so we decided to include images of both.
Our favorite and the most difficult one: the Dog The carved lines on the dogs’ bodies follow the pattern of dog harness straps. The Nanai have been carving dogs in this manner for as long as they are known in the historical record. In the image, the two upper photographs show relatively old items dating to the mid-19th century. The item in the lower left is a modern piece from the late 20th century.
Frog We do not know much about frog-shaped toys, but we do know that shamans decorated their costumes with frog figures. Frogs were likely an important symbolic element in shamanic tradition — and we will talk more about them later.
