In the easternmost part of Siberia and the areas bordering it to the south, a number of small (in terms of numbers of speakers) unrelated language families are grouped together under the header 'Palaeo-Siberian'. The name of this grouping suggests antiquity, and indeed the languages belonging to these families are believed to have existed for long, and dominated a much more extensive area in the past than they do now. The families are (1) Chukotko-Kamtchatkan (also named Luorawetlan), of which Chukchi (12,000) and Koryak (8,000 speakers) are most prominent; (2) Yukaghir, at present still containing only the language with the same name (500 speakers); (3) Yenisei Ostyak, of which only Ket (1,000 speakers), spoken on the banks of the Central Yenisei river, is still convincingly alive; and (4) the language isolate Gilyak or Nivkh, spoken by 400 out of an ethnic population of 5,000 on the island of Sakhalin.