Yeniseian people  The Yeniseian people are a Siberian population that speaks Yeniseian languages. Despite evidence pointing to the historical presence of Yeniseian populations throughout Central Siberia and Northern Mongolia, only the Ket people survive today. The modern Kets live along the eastern middle stretch of the Yenisei River in Northern Siberia. According to the 2010 census, there were 1,220 Kets in Russia. Based on hydronymic data, the Yeniseians originated from the area around the Sayan Mountains and the southern tip of Lake Baikal. The known historical distribution of the Yeniseians is likely to represent a northward migration, with the modern-day Kets representing the very northernmost expansion of the language family. This migration possibly occurred as a result of the fall of the Xiongnu confederation, which, according to Alexander Vovin, is likely to have had a Yeniseian-speaking ruling elite. The Jie people, a branch of the Xiongnu who established the Later Zhao state in China, are likely to have been Yeniseian rather than Turkic in origin, as supported by linguistic and ethnogeographic data. With the proposal of the Dené–Yeniseian language family, the Yeniseians have been linked to Native Americans, particularly the Athabaskans. It has been suggested that the Yeniseians represent a back-migration from the Bering land bridge to Central Siberia. Not much is known about the history of the Yeniseian people. According to several historians, the Yeniseians were part of the Xiongnu and were possibly the ruling elite of this confederation. It is also suggested that they played an important role in the Hunnic Empire. The Jie people, possibly an Indo-European tribe or have some related to Yeniseian, created the Later Zhao dynasty and conquered parts of northern China. Based on linguistic records, they are considered to be a Pumpokolic tribe, a theory supported by evidence of long-term Pumpokolic inhabitation in northern Mongolia. After some time, they were defeated and either murdered or assimilated into the Han society. Like the Jie people, most other Yeniseian groups either went extinct or were assimilated into other ethnicities, most notably Turkic and Mongolic people. By the time of Russian conquest, only six remaining Yeniseian languages could be documented: the northern Ket and Yugh, the southern Kott and Assan, and the central Arin and Pumpokol.