isimov 1963b: 166). Among the Evenk, the bear and the elk were the most powerful animals, and the bear was the master of all animals:
In the upper world of the universe the bear running pursues the elk khargi, giving rise to the succession of day and night in the land of people. In the nether world the mythical elk cow khargi lies under the roots of the cosmic world tree, giving birth to animals and people for the middle world, while the spirit master (a bear) of the nether world takes the souls of the dead back to himself, to the nether world. In the middle world of the universe, the place of the living people, the spirit lukuchen (an elk) fights with other spirits of the tribal pantheon (Anisimov 1963b: 198).
The linking of the cosmological image of the elk (deer) with the image of the mammoth, functionally analogous, and in turn, that of the mammoth with the views on the nether world, is characteristic of the mythology of most of the nationalities of northern Asia, and truly, it may be considered a common Siberian phenomenon (Anisimov 1963b: 167).
Also, among the spirit rulers of the netherworld the image of the elk-deer was used as the guard for the river of the mythical shaman clan. This elk-deer had the antlers of an elk and the tail of a fish and connects with both water and land.
The Voguls (Kannisto etal. 1958:89), west of the northern Ural Mountains, saw the star constellation known today as the Big Bear as a male elk. The Evenk saw the same elk as female. In general, the elk is associated with the passage of seasons (Anisimov 1963b: 163), and especially with the regeneration of nature. For example, among the Soswa Voguls, (Kannisto et al. 1958: 93, 391-392), when the ice breaks and starts to move in a village, the men cook and consume an elk head while the women also cook and eat elk meat. Small girls take part, as on other occasions, in the consumption of the elk head. The meal is consumed at the river bank. When the ice starts to move, the dish with sacrificial meat is placed on the shore and the men shoot their guns, bow their heads and utter an incantation to secure future yields of food from the river. After the incantation the meat is thrown onto the river ice. There was also the tradition in different areas that elk bones had to be thrown into water. If they were thrown onto the ground, the elk would not let hunters come close.
Among the Unter Kunda Voguls, who sacrificed small gifts, the weak elk bones were given to the dogs while the hard, strong bones were boiled, split to extract the marrow, and then sunk into water (Kannisto et al. 1958: 93, 391-392). The Pclymka were not required to throw elk bones into water, as was their custom with the bones of the bear, but the people were careful not to spill elk blood or meat on the floor of the house, while the blood and meat of the bear do not appear to have been as important. Elk meat could not be eaten out of an unclean dish from which red fish had been eaten. If, however, the dish was properly cleaned, it was possible to eat meat from such a dish and it was even possible to cook elk meat and dried fish together (Kannisto etal. 1958: 392).
Among the many examples of the cosmic and ritual significance of the elk I have found no mention of an association between boats and elk. The sole reference to boats in rituals comes from Holmberg (1927: 32-33), who mentions that the Ugrians and the Karelian Finns had a custom of burying their dead in a boat or a punt, and it is argued that this is connected both with an old belief regarding the journey across water to the world of the dead, and with the need for a boat in the world of the dead. Also, the Vikings buried their dead in boats to ensure that they would journey to the realm of death. In essence, there is a plausible connection between death and transportation of the dead in boats. While one might not want to draw the conclusion that all boats in the rock art are similarly connected, some might be.
It is possible that the elk beliefs in the ethnographic records represent the last vestiges of a belief system 