Nearly all writers on Siberia agree that the position of the female shaman in modern days is sometimes even more important than that occupied by the male.

Krasheninnikoff ascribes the shamanistic gift among the Kamchadal almost exclusively to women; Steller, who travelled through Kamchatka after him, states, however, that there were also men-shamans among the Yukaghir, Koryak, and Chukchee. Bogoras, Jochelson, and others saw as many notable women shamans as men. Tretyakoff (op. cit., p. 213) affirms the existence of women-shamans side by side with men-shamans among the Samoyed of Turukhan, and the same, according to Bielayewski,[1] is true of the Ostyak. Among the Tungus of Baikal [2] the woman can be a shaman as well as the man; and Gmelin [3] met among them a woman eighteen years of age who was held superior to any man-shaman. Among the Yakut and Buryat there are shamans of both sexes.[4] Solovieff [5] thinks that among the Yakut the female shamans are considered less important than the male, and the people ask their help only when there is no man-shaman in the neighbourhood. The shamanesses, according to him, are especially good in foretelling the future, looking for things that are lost, and curing mental diseases,

Among the Palaeo-Siberians, women receive the gift of shamanizing more often than men. The woman is by nature a shaman,'

Taking into account the present prominent position of female shamans among many Siberian tribes and their place in traditions,' together with certain feminine attributes of the male shaman (such as dress, habits, privileges) and certain linguistic similarities between the names for male and female shamans,[2] many scientists (Troshchanski, Bogoras, Stadling) have been led to express the opinion that in former days, only female shamans existed, and that the male. shaman is a later development which has to some extent supplanted them.

Concerning the supposed evolution of the shaman from female to male There is no certain knowledge; one can only surmise. The different views of the origin of shamanism naturally affect the theory that shamans were originally female.