The country is partly mountainous and partly lowland. The northern area is a tundra region. The climate is dry, with long and severe winters. The vegetation consists predominantly of larch, with some birch and pine. The animal life includes squirrel, Siberian ferret, ermine, hare, fox, bear, wolverine, elk, blue fox, wild reindeer, and musk deer.
Fish are also abundant.
In a number of ways, the Yakut people were different from the neighboring Siberian peoples. Furthermore, the Yakut were primarily pastoralists, whereas their neighbors were hunters and fishers. For these reasons, the traditional theory of the origin of the Yakut is that they migrated from the Lake Baikal region in either the tenth or the thirteenth century. In the seventeenth century, Yakutia was contacted and annexed by Russia, and during the eighteenth century, the area served as a transit camp and highway for freight to newly-annexed Siberian lands. Russian settlers moved into the area in the late eighteenth century, but it should be noted that Russians have never constituted a very large proportion of the population.