There are two positions on this long-debated question.
One is based on the work of the Russian archeologist Okladnikov: according to this theory, somewhere in the middle of the Neolithic, proto-Tungus hunters settled in the vicinity of Lake Baikal. To the south, the ancestors of Turkic and Mongol horse-breeding populations had begun migrating. Much later (the date is not given) movements of Turkic-speaking populations into the Baikal region scattered the Tungus (here the ancestors of the Evenk and the Even) in two waves of migration (eastwards and westwards) throughout Siberia, from the Okhotsk Sea to the Yenissei River, creating, as they encountered or merged with local ethnic groups, the linguistic and cultural particularities found today.
The other position is the one adopted today by most Russian ethnologists and linguists. It sees the Tungus as coming from present-day northern China (the Amur-Ussuri region and Manchuria). This was already Shirokogoroffís opinion (1966: 1ñ3).
Archeological research to date does not allow us to chose one position over the other. Nevertheless everyone agrees to attribute to the Tungus or the proto-Tungus a large number of the rock paintings along the Lena, Yenissei and Amur rivers and their feeder streams (Vasilevich 1969: 39ñ41).