The article examines the historiography Yu.N. Roerich’s studies of Tibet (1902–1960). Being a talented linguist, historian, art critic and expert on religions Yu.N. Roerich retraced the many-sided history and culture of Tibet from the antiquity period to the XX century. Yu.N. Roerich’s academic career is still the only case in the national scholarship when studying of Tibet was carried out for a long period of time and among the Tibetan language speakers and Tibetan culture bearers. Yu.N. Roerich put the issue of archaeological studies of Tibet to the forefront. His anthropological research is aimed at both the history of Tibetan tribes and their state at the beginning of last century. In the 1930s the scholar worked out a concept of secular and religious history of Tibet. In Roerich’s opinion, the country separated from the outside world by natural barriers and kept for hundreds of years in socio-political isolation, can provide answers to many questions of ancient and medieval history of China, India, Mongolia and Central Asia, whose development had been greatly influenced by the western civilization. Works by Yu.N. Roerich keep relevance not only as an important link in the history of science, but also as a source of ideas which form a framework of further studies.