Instruments Topshur - a two-stringed instrument similar to a lute of Tuva, Mongolia, or Kazakhstan. The body and the neck are carved from cedar wood and the body is often covered with the leather of wild animals, camels, or goats. The strings are wound from horse-tails and tuned to an interval of a fourth. Ikili - a stringed instrument similar to the topshur but with a longer neck; the strings are wound from the sinews of deer or mountain sheep and it is played with a bow made of willow, with a horse tail bow-string coated with larch or cedar wood resin. Shoor - a wind instrument like an elongated flute like those of the Bashkirs and the Caucasians. It is basically a long, smooth, hollow pipe 70 cm long. Ungurek - also a wind instrument, produced by modern master-craftsmen out of clay and fired in a kiln like ceramics. Komus - a jew's harp made of brass or steel nowadays, but in earlier days of wood. A spring, acting as a vibrator, is fitted into a horseshoe shaped metal holder and is called the tongue. The player places the long part of the instrument against his mouth, touching it with his front teeth and manipulates the tongue with his right hand. The pitch can be varied by changing the shape of the mouth cavity, which at the same time acts as a resonance chamber. Adishi-Marok - a wind instrument used for coaxing wild deer and made of birch bark. Amirgi-Marok - a similar wind instrument used for coaxing Siberian deer. Shagay - a wind instrument made from sheep's bones. Shagur - a similar wind instrument to the shoor but with holes on the side and made of wood, only about 30 to 40 cm long. Shatra - a kind of rattle. Singing technique Kai is one of the oldest forms of overtone singing (throat-singing) using only the lowest and highest register. Sikit means 'to whistle' and is the highest, brightest style of overtone singing, in which the highest register of the voice is used. (In nature every sound has overtones - even the whistling of the wind has its harmonics). Karkiraa is the lowest sound a human voice can emanate. It must rise from the deepest part of the windpipe and resonate in the chest. Koomoi is another kind of overtone singing with two notes ? the highest and the lowest ? produced at the same time. A master of koomoi is even able to produce three tones at the same time. Overtone singing can also be heard from Turkic-speaking tribes in disparate parts of central Asia. The Bashkir musicians from the Ural Mountains call their style of overtone singing uzlyau; the Khakass call it khai and the Tuvinians khoomei. Overtone singing remains a common feature of Siberian peoples as well as the Kazakhs and Mongolian tribes. Overtone or throat singing is a special technique in which a single vocalist produces two distinct tones simultaneously. One tone is a low, sustained fundamental pitch (a kind of drone) and the second is a series of flutelike harmonics, which resonate high above this drone. Those who master this singing technique may even make the overtone sound louder then the fundamental pitch, so the drone is not audible anymore. A different technique often used by overtone singers combines a normal glottal pitch with the low frequency, pulse-like vibration known as vocal fry. (The Turkic tribes in the Altai use to sing their texts in such a low vocal fry register of about 25-20 Hz). Religion Shamans play an important part in the Altai region. They wear richly decorated costume and beat big drums on which the Altais paint a representation of the universe and its divisions. Shamans mediate between the world of spirits and that of mankind. They know how to drive out the demons which settle in the human body and cause illnesses or, if demons are holding the person's soul captive, they know how to persuade it to release him or her, sometimes by making a sacrifice. In the minds of these people the human beings have several souls to lead them through the various phases of life. The loss of one such soul does not bring about an immediate but a long drawn-out death. The shamans can also banish the spirits into little idols, figurines made of wood or bone. The Altais believe that the universe consists of several layers of Heaven above our Earth and of just as many layers of the Underworld beneath it, all inhabited by good and evil spirits. The highest Heaven, however, is reserved for the highest God of Heaven, as if the world were a mountain in the middle of the universe. They believe in spirits which take possession of people and in spirits of animals and of the dead. Two major sacrificial festivals in the spring and in the autumn determine the course of the year. An animal, usually a horse, is slaughtered on these days and a banquet follows at which the animal's flesh is eaten and mare's milk drunk (kumys). This is when the popular wrestling matches and horse-races take place. History The Altai region was inhabited even in pre-historic times and a settlement on the banks of the river Ulelushka even dates from before the first Ice Age. In the days of the Old Orient, the first civilisation in Egypt and Mesopotamia and the first mass migrations, the Aryans, who belonged to the primitive Indo-Germanic language group, migrated eastwards and mingled with the nomads who lived there. This was the start of the metal-working age in the Altai: bronze and copper at first, later also iron. The Turkish branch of the Oirates, which includes the Teleuts and the Telengetes, also settled in the Altai and their culture was very similar to that of their neighbouring tribes and of the steppe peoples of central Asia. This group of steppe peoples, which stretched right across central Asia and south-eastern Europe to the eastern Mediterranean, was conquered in the centuries before Christ by war-like nomadic tribes of horsemen. They are represented in the eastern steppes by the Mongolians, who are usually referred to under the general heading of Huns, and lived in the area which nowadays forms Mongolia and all the way across to the Korean Bay. The central part, modern Turkestan, was settled by a mixed range of Indo-Europeans and Mongols and included Scythians, Sarmates, Parthans and others who had initially stayed in the Iranian uplands but had then been driven out by invading waves of Medes and Persians. The high cultures bordering the steppes to the south, in China, India and the Old Orient, were linked with the steppe peoples by the age-old trading route along the southern edge of the steppes, the "Silk Road". In about the middle of the 6th century we hear for the first time of the Turks, the ancestors of the present-day Altais. The first Turkish empire arose and covered northern Mongolia to the upper reaches of the river Yenisey, into the Dsungarey and eastern Turkestan to the kingdom of Chw?rizm, but soon broke apart into an eastern and a western part. The core of this Turkish union, which formed its first alliance in 552 AD, was the Turkish people all around the Altai; this union created the "Turkkhanat" centred on the river Orchon in the Altai. At its highest flowering, this loose grouping of nations stretched from the Korean Bay to the Caspian Sea and the northern Caucasus, and its northern borders almost reached the Baikal Sea. Its southern rim touched the Great Wall of China and present-day Tibet. The greatest cultural achievement of the Turkkhanat was the development of its own writing, or Turkish runes, passed down to the present day in the inscriptions in the Orchon region of northern Mongolia and the upper Yenisey. Like all these early central Asian states, this Turkish empire was based on a loose alliance of various nomadic tribes and was from the start in danger of internal collapse. The Turks soon came under the influence of the ancient Chinese culture in the south-eastern part of their empire, whilst the western tribes mingled with the local Iranian population and very largely gave up their nomadic way of life. The eastern Turkish empire was conquered in 745 AD by the Uigurs, likewise a Turkish race, whilst in the western part the Turkish people of the Karlukes inherited that part of the empire a few decades later. Excavations in Turfan have testified to the high flowering of the Turkish culture before and during the reign of the Uigurs. Their religion was Manichaeic and they had a particularly fine tradition of painting. The Uigurs were driven out in 840 AD by the Kirgisks, but at about this time a new force was spreading into central Asia: Islam, the religion which still today dominates the western part of this region and which even reached India in the 8th century, carried by invading Arabs. The empire of Genghis Khan overwhelmed the Altai in the 13th century. After the Mongol horde had stormed in and out again, in the second half of the 13th century the Turks made their first appearance in the western part of Asia Minor and created the Osman Empire. Another Mongolian military ruler, Timur-lenk, led his tribe of horsemen, now converted to Islam, westwards and south-westwards from Samarkand and spread out his rule northwards all the way to Moscow. To the south he pushed on towards India and through Persia and Mesopotamia towards Europe; Baghdad was conquered in 1401. The Altai regained their independence once his empire had crumbled away at the end of the 14th century. Tsar Ivan III raised armed resistance against the Mongol as they advanced up the Volga and the Russian Empire took the place of the Arch-Duchies which had been more or less dependent on the Mongol khan. The Altai has been an autonomous republic within Russia since May 1992.