ABSTRACT
Semen Ulianovich Remezov, a Cossack Adventurer who became a Siberian noble, mapmaker, architect, engineer, and icon painter, succeeded in attaining an up-to-date education in remote Tobolsk decades before Peter the Great even suggested that administrators should master valuable sciences Not unlike Columbus, who described the New World and its inhabitants using the images and terms that were familiar to him from the Bible, Remezov approached fledgling but unfamiliar Western science with images and terms that were familiar to him; namely, his experience as a Siberian frontline frontier Cossack. Nevertheless, in most cases he stuck to his locally well-established craft of medieval-looking Muscovite mapmaking. He mastered the craft to such a degree and utilized it so meticulously that not just Moscow but the world first learned Siberian topography, history, and ethnography from him. The early modern world outside China and Central Asia learned little about Siberia.
