Which is more European ? Finno-ugric languages or Indo-European languages?

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Jaska, I agree with you completely when you say that language families are not spread by a single yDNA haplogroup. It can be true only in a very small language group with a small number people.

Then, I agree with you completely when you say that ”at the moment linguistic results show that Late Proto-Uralic was located in Europe, but Pre-Proto-Uralic was located in Southern Siberia.” It is all so natural when you take into account the probable origin of N1b and N1c (old nomenclature!) in West China and their post-Ice Age expansion into Europe.

I am also very excited to see your summary below:
We must remember that languages did not spread to their present areas at once, but along many consequent steps. For example Tundra Nenets spoken north of the Volga-Kama region (he original homeland of Late Proto-Uralic) did not spread right there, but in several steps:
1. From Volga-Kama to the east to Sayan Mountains (Pre-Proto-Samoyedic)
2. From Sayan Mountains to the north between Yenisei and Ob (Proto-North-Samoyedic)
3. From Lower Yenisei Valley to the west (Proto-Nenets)
4. From Lower Ob to the west (Tundra Nenets)
So, at some point, part of Uralic folks started heading back to the East.

What I do not share is this theory in which Uralic people are seen as old-fashioned Arctic blokes civilized by Indo-Europeans. I think that all language groups of the world have been winners in their heyday and all existing language families must have been important vectors of innovations and a new lifestyle at some point of the history. With this I mean that also Uralic languages must have been spread by people who had acquired the new modern cultural package and carried it to the areas of their cultural radiation. From this perspective, I really do not think that Uralic languages spread from the Arctic Tundra to southern areas, but instead, that the Uralic groups assimilated on their way many Arctic populations and adopted locally many words from these cultures. I do believe that, for example, Saami and Finnish languages contain words (as well as genes, autosomally speaking) from ancient Arctic/Subarctic Northwestern hunter gatherers but I do not think that this should be understood as if Finnic languages spread from Lapland to the Baltic rim. However, I accept fully that Altaic and Uralic languages may go back to a language of ancient Siberians that were adapted to a cold climate.
 
Jaska, I agree with you completely when you say that language families are not spread by a single yDNA haplogroup. It can be true only in a very small language group with a small number people.

I'd agree on that as well.

Then, I agree with you completely when you say that ”at the moment linguistic results show that Late Proto-Uralic was located in Europe, but Pre-Proto-Uralic was located in Southern Siberia.” It is all so natural when you take into account the probable origin of N1b and N1c (old nomenclature!) in West China and their post-Ice Age expansion into Europe.

I am also very excited to see your summary below:
We must remember that languages did not spread to their present areas at once, but along many consequent steps. For example Tundra Nenets spoken north of the Volga-Kama region (he original homeland of Late Proto-Uralic) did not spread right there, but in several steps:
1. From Volga-Kama to the east to Sayan Mountains (Pre-Proto-Samoyedic)
2. From Sayan Mountains to the north between Yenisei and Ob (Proto-North-Samoyedic)
3. From Lower Yenisei Valley to the west (Proto-Nenets)
4. From Lower Ob to the west (Tundra Nenets)
So, at some point, part of Uralic folks started heading back to the East.

What I do not share is this theory in which Uralic people are seen as old-fashioned Arctic blokes civilized by Indo-Europeans.

I don't think so either. I elaborated before that the "core" vocabulary is that of a hunter-gatherer society (Jaska disagrees here, he says agricultural or pastoralist terms are actually reconstructable). To me, the most plausible explanation is that while Proto-Uralic is probably a hunter-gatherer language, I don't think the language family is a Mesolithic "relic". Its more probable that Proto-Uralic actually dates from the Neolithic (or, contemporary to the Neolithic in much of Europe, I should specify), but that it originates in an area that was unsuitable for agriculture (ie, taiga climate - bear in mind that while, for instance the Comb Ceramic culture were hunter-gatherers, they produced pottery - and I should note that I don't necessarily think that the bearers of the Comb Ceramic culture spoke Proto-Uralic, but I certainly still hold that a possibility). My point for Finnic (I'm only talking about the Baltic-Finnic branch now, the ancestor of modern Finnish and Estonian) is that it would seem logical to me that they transitioned immediately from hunter-gatherers into the Bronze Age, and that they adopted terminology for pastoralism and metal-working from an Indo-European-speaking context (especially early Germanic, early Balto-Slavic and possibly Iranic). For the other branches of Uralic, I wouldn't say I'm that sure, but what is clear is that modern Finnish and Hungarian sit at extreme different positions inside the Uralic languages. Akio suggested that the ancestors Saami languages expanded only into northern Scandinavia during the Iron Age. I might elaborate that Akio also suggests that there are loanwords from Paleo-European languages in the Saami languages.

I think that all language groups of the world have been winners in their heyday and all existing language families must have been important vectors of innovations and a new lifestyle at some point of the history. With this I mean that also Uralic languages must have been spread by people who had acquired the new modern cultural package and carried it to the areas of their cultural radiation. From this perspective, I really do not think that Uralic languages spread from the Arctic Tundra to southern areas, but instead, that the Uralic groups assimilated on their way many Arctic populations and adopted locally many words from these cultures. I do believe that, for example, Saami and Finnish languages contain words (as well as genes, autosomally speaking) from ancient Arctic/Subarctic Northwestern hunter gatherers but I do not think that this should be understood as if Finnic languages spread from Lapland to the Baltic rim.

No, as I said above, this is a clear evidence for a later expansion of Uralic into northern Scandinavia.

However, I accept fully that Altaic and Uralic languages may go back to a language of ancient Siberians that were adapted to a cold climate.

I think the "Ural-Altaic" concept is dated.
 
Nobody has suggested that a language can only be developed by one haplogroup. However, I think it probable that, in the past, when the different human populations were less mixed than at present, a particular language or proto-language may have been developed by people who were either entirely or largely from one Y haplogroup. And there does seem to be a strong connection between Y haplotype N and the Uralic languages, IMO. And some specific Uralic languages seem to be connected to some extent to a particular subclade. For example, most Finnish men have either I1 or N1c, and I think it's fairly likely that the people who brought Finnish to Finland were predominantly N1c.

As for the origin point of Proto-Uralic, given that it was a hunter gatherer language that probably developed during the Neolithic, it could have only evolved in either northern Russia or Siberia, since farming and pastoralism developed quite early on in southern Russia. I suspect that Siberia is a better choice if the Uralic languages adopted loan words for agricultural activity after splitting into sub-groups. I do realize that Finns have a real phobia about Finnish being seen as "Asian", so I see any Finnish paper on the subject as being more political than scholarly. Once we drop this strange notion that there's something wrong with a language or population developing in Asia, perhaps a less biased approach will be possible.
 
As for the origin point of Proto-Uralic, given that it was a hunter gatherer language that probably developed during the Neolithic, it could have only evolved in either northern Russia or Siberia, since farming and pastoralism developed quite early on in southern Russia.

In my opinion, Proto-Uralic is not necessarily a hunter gatherer language. This may just be a result of circular reasoning. Secondly, if you aim to say that Proto-Uralic people must have been culturally less advanced than people who adopted the IE language, I am not so sure that I believe you, as I do not think that Indo-Europeans (e.g. Lithuanians, Germans and Swedes) were pastoralists and agriculturalists while Estonians, Finns and Saami were hunter-gatherers; there may have been a short delay compared to Lithuania but this does not change the big picture. When the Finnish language was brought to Finland, it may have been part of the same historic event that brought for example an IE language into Scandinavia, i.e. the Iron Age revolution (of course, I am not sure about this, but it is a possibility). However, the Corded Ware Culture arrived at the same time in Finland and Sweden and it arrived from Poland to both areas, and we do not know for sure what language they were speaking.

Similarly, we do not know yet clearly where in Asia N1c and N1b were found. One undetermined N haplo has been recently confirmed in North China together with a lot of yDNA Q and another one was previously detected in Northern Mongolia in a Xiognu context.

When N1c was rapidly spreading in the Arctic areas, it was probably due to reindeer herding, i.e. to the pastoralist revolution. I am not at all of the opinion that Finnic and Volga-Uralic groups adopted a Neolithic way of life any later than other Northern European hunter gatherers.

I have nothing against Asian roots. It is probable that IE languages, Altaic languages and Uralic languages all developed in Asia. Ex oriente lux!
 
In my opinion, Proto-Uralic is not necessarily a hunter gatherer language. This may just be a result of circular reasoning. Secondly, if you aim to say that Proto-Uralic people must have been culturally less advanced than people who adopted the IE language, I am not so sure that I believe you, as I do not think that Indo-Europeans (e.g. Lithuanians, Germans and Swedes) were pastoralists and agriculturalists while Estonians, Finns and Saami were hunter-gatherers; there may have been a short delay compared to Lithuania but this does not change the big picture. When the Finnish language was brought to Finland, it may have been part of the same historic event that brought for example an IE language into Scandinavia, i.e. the Iron Age revolution (of course, I am not sure about this, but it is a possibility). However, the Corded Ware Culture arrived at the same time in Finland and Sweden and it arrived from Poland to both areas, and we do not know for sure what language they were speaking.

Similarly, we do not know yet clearly where in Asia N1c and N1b were found. One undetermined N haplo has been recently confirmed in North China together with a lot of yDNA Q and another one was previously detected in Northern Mongolia in a Xiognu context.

When N1c was rapidly spreading in the Arctic areas, it was probably due to reindeer herding, i.e. to the pastoralist revolution. I am not at all of the opinion that Finnic and Volga-Uralic groups adopted a Neolithic way of life any later than other Northern European hunter gatherers.

I think it is making a leap to say "hunter-gatherer" equals "culturally less advanced". I mean, how much sense does it make to practice agriculture in a taiga climate with long seasons and short summers that are quite unsuitable for agriculture? There's a very specific reason that the hunter-gatherer lifestyle survived longer in northern Europe (esp. Northeastern Europe) than elsewhere.

The likeliest scenario here is, as I said, that the Uralic speakers transitioned immediately from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle into the Bronze Age, and this happened from contact with Indo-European speakers. To pick two examples:

iron (from Balto-Slavic):
- Estonian "raud", Finnish "rauta"
- Russian "rudy", Lithuanian "rūda", from the earlier Indo-European word for "red".


gold (from Germanic):
- Estonian, Finnish "kulta"
- German "Gold", Swedish "guld", Gothic "gulth", but also Latvian "zelts", Polish "złoto", Russian "zoloto"
 
I have strange feeling this is related to Latvian vasks. Wax produced by bees of which honey cells are made.
Copper pics on google reminds wax quite a lot. If you have worked with it in childhood you would see the similarity :)
 
Or Uralic groups were part of the same world and shared the same words. The ultimate origin is not known to us, as it is too easy allways just to say that all words of new inventions must a priori be IE words.

I disagree, it is not "too easy". I gave a very specific reason for this: the Finnic word for "iron" is derived from an earlier word for "red" found throughout the Indo-European languages (from a common PIE root, *Hrudh-), including Celtic (Irish "rua", Welsh "rhudd"), Germanic (English "red", German "rot"), Greek ("ερυθρος" or "erythros") and Indo-Iranic (Sanskrit "rudhira"). The semantic change from "red-coloured" to "metal ore" is uniquely a Balto-Slavic innovation, and its clear that the Finnic word derives from this.
The word for "gold" is a similar case (*ghel-).


Interesting!
 
I have strange feeling this is related to Latvian vasks. Wax produced by bees of which honey cells are made.
Copper pics on google reminds wax quite a lot. If you have worked with it in childhood you would see the similarity :)
Interesting observation. Also in Polish honey is Miod and copper is Miedz. To similar to be coincidental?
 
Out of curiosity, I looked up the Finnish word for 'sea" in an on-line dictionary and apparently it's "meri", which would seem to be of Indo-European origin. (The Scottish Gaelic word for sea is "muir" and the Latin word for sea is "mare".) So, wherever Finno-Permian developed, it wasn't in Finland, which is close to the sea. If Proto-Uralic did develop west of the Urals, it must have developed both too far north for farming and too far inland to have a word for "sea", unless the original Uralic word got replaced for some reason, which I suppose is always a possibility.
 
Btw, very good source (at least for a non-linguist like me) on word etimology is wictionary. Meri comes from proto-Germanic.
 
I agree that ”red” is probably an older meaning than ”iron”. However, it is interesting to note that the word for red in Sanskrit is ”rakta” and ”rohita” and in Saami ”ruoksat:d”. The Finnish word ”rauta” looks like it is derived from the Sanskrit word ”rakta”. As for the Caucasian correspondences, in Georgian iron is ”rk’ina” and in Lezgi raq’. All these forms + Saami word look like having retained the older ”k” sound. Germanic and Russian words have lost the k sound, so they look more derived than the Saami words and could even have developed from the Finnish form "rauta". :)
 
”Aberdeen” said:
And there does seem to be a strong connection between Y haplotype N and the Uralic languages, IMO.
N is too wide and too old stage to be compared to Uralic languages. N has dispersed to different subhaplogroups during the Ice Age, but dispersal of Late Proto-Uralic only occurred during the Early Northern Bronze Age. Therefore the distinction that Samoyeds have N1b and others have N1c cannot descend from any Proto-Uralic N-population – linguistic and genetic datings do not match.

”Aberdeen” said:
For example, most Finnish men have either I1 or N1c, and I think it's fairly likely that the people who brought Finnish to Finland were predominantly N1c.
So far the best match for the Uralic languages seems to be a subhaplogroup of N1c1: Z1936, which has western (Z1935 > Karelian and Savonian groups) and eastern (L1034 > Ugric and Volga-Turkic) descendants.

Still, Samoyeds must be explained differently: their founder population had N1b, but that is found as far west as among the Vepsians. So it is possible that also N1b was present already among the Proto-Uralic speakers.

”Aberdeen” said:
As for the origin point of Proto-Uralic, given that it was a hunter gatherer language that probably developed during the Neolithic, it could have only evolved in either northern Russia or Siberia, since farming and pastoralism developed quite early on in southern Russia. I suspect that Siberia is a better choice if the Uralic languages adopted loan words for agricultural activity after splitting into sub-groups. I do realize that Finns have a real phobia about Finnish being seen as "Asian", so I see any Finnish paper on the subject as being more political than scholarly.
Here you are wrong – there is nothing political locating Late Proto-Uralic in Europe, because all the linguistic evidence support that. You should compare the new 2000’s results to the outdated 70’s Hungarian view (supporting the Siberian homeland), so you would understand the evidence.

For example, nobody locates Northwest Indo-European and Early Proto-Aryan in Siberia. So, when Proto-Uralic has loanwords from both of these languages, how could it have been spoken in Siberia?

Please read this and accept the best-argued linguistic results:
http://www.elisanet.fi/alkupera/UralicEvidence.pdf

”Aberdeen” said:
Once we drop this strange notion that there's something wrong with a language or population developing in Asia, perhaps a less biased approach will be possible.
Bias is in your head only. Finnish scholars have no problem with Asia – for example, Pre-Proto-Uralic has repeatedly located in Siberia:
http://www.sgr.fi/sust/sust264/sust264_hakkinenj.pdf
 
”Vedun” said:
Majority of professors who study & speak Hungarian languages i spoke to, told me that Hungarian has more similarities with Turkic languages than with Finnic for example
That is utter nonsense!
No true historical linguist claims that Hungarian has more similarities with Turkic than Finnic or other Uralic languages. Read this and then present your counter-evidence, if you can:
http://www.elisanet.fi/alkupera/Hungarian.pdf

Sorry, but your opinion is unscientific bullshit.

”Kristiina” said:
What I do not share is this theory in which Uralic people are seen as old-fashioned Arctic blokes civilized by Indo-Europeans. I think that all language groups of the world have been winners in their heyday and all existing language families must have been important vectors of innovations and a new lifestyle at some point of the history. With this I mean that also Uralic languages must have been spread by people who had acquired the new modern cultural package and carried it to the areas of their cultural radiation. From this perspective, I really do not think that Uralic languages spread from the Arctic Tundra to southern areas, but instead, that the Uralic groups assimilated on their way many Arctic populations and adopted locally many words from these cultures.
Actually I never said that Uralic languages originated in the tundra; I locate the homeland on the southern forest zone around the Volga-Kama fork. And I agree that Proto-Uralic speakers must have had some cultural advantage, so that they could replace Indo-European language in Northern Baltia, for example. Considering the time and place of Uralic expansion, Seima-Turbino bronze-trade network seems fitting.

”Taranis” said:
The likeliest scenario here is, as I said, that the Uralic speakers transitioned immediately from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle into the Bronze Age, and this happened from contact with Indo-European speakers.
I agree, but this happened already during the Late Proto-Uralic stage: there are metal names reconstructed in Proto-Uralic (for example ‘gold’ from Aryan, actually Proto-Iranian). The later metal names in western (and eastern, too) languages are not the earliest metal names in Uralic.
 
Kristiina said:
The Finnish word ”rauta” looks like it is derived from the Sanskrit word ”rakta”.
Very interesting suggestion! However, Proto-Finnic *rakta would be rauta only in (West) Finnish, while it would have been preserved as **rakta in Karelian and Vepsian. Because we have rauta in all Finnic languages, this explanation is not so good. Also meaning 'red' in Sanskrit is not as close.

So far the best etymologies are Germanic (*raudan 'iron ore') and Slavic (*raudaa 'ore'), both regularly leading to Proto-Finnic *rauta 'iron (ore)'.
 
N is too wide and too old stage to be compared to Uralic languages. N has dispersed to different subhaplogroups during the Ice Age, but dispersal of Late Proto-Uralic only occurred during the Early Northern Bronze Age. Therefore the distinction that Samoyeds have N1b and others have N1c cannot descend from any Proto-Uralic N-population – linguistic and genetic datings do not match.


So far the best match for the Uralic languages seems to be a subhaplogroup of N1c1: Z1936, which has western (Z1935 > Karelian and Savonian groups) and eastern (L1034 > Ugric and Volga-Turkic) descendants.

Still, Samoyeds must be explained differently: their founder population had N1b, but that is found as far west as among the Vepsians. So it is possible that also N1b was present already among the Proto-Uralic speakers.


Here you are wrong – there is nothing political locating Late Proto-Uralic in Europe, because all the linguistic evidence support that. You should compare the new 2000’s results to the outdated 70’s Hungarian view (supporting the Siberian homeland), so you would understand the evidence.

For example, nobody locates Northwest Indo-European and Early Proto-Aryan in Siberia. So, when Proto-Uralic has loanwords from both of these languages, how could it have been spoken in Siberia?

Please read this and accept the best-argued linguistic results:
http://www.elisanet.fi/alkupera/UralicEvidence.pdf


Bias is in your head only. Finnish scholars have no problem with Asia – for example, Pre-Proto-Uralic has repeatedly located in Siberia:
http://www.sgr.fi/sust/sust264/sust264_hakkinenj.pdf

You have a genius for constantly missing the point. Uralic is spoken by people from a number of different subclades of N, all of which are found in Siberia and only one of which (N1c) is also found in Europe, and linguists have noted the obvious connection between Uralic and Altaic. Languages don't appear in a vacuum, and Uralic obviously evolved from an earlier language with Altaic roots. And Proto-Uralic is probably only about 4000 years old, so it evolved when Indo-European had already spread and split into different languages. There is no basis for some fantasy about IE and Proto-Uralic needing to develop near one another. The Uralic languages were spread by hunter gatherers who didn't need names for metal or farming activities until they immigrated to areas where metal work and farming were taking place.
 
Very interesting suggestion! However, Proto-Finnic *rakta would be rauta only in (West) Finnish, while it would have been preserved as **rakta in Karelian and Vepsian. Because we have rauta in all Finnic languages, this explanation is not so good. Also meaning 'red' in Sanskrit is not as close.

So far the best etymologies are Germanic (*raudan 'iron ore') and Slavic (*raudaa 'ore'), both regularly leading to Proto-Finnic *rauta 'iron (ore)'.

I did not mean that ”iron” was ever rakta in Finnic languages and it is clear that Balto-Slavic, Germanic and Finnic words are related. What I meant is that Finnic rauta may be derived from a lost language that had ”rakta” or a word closely resembling it for iron which has survived as slightly changed in Georgian and Northeast Caucasian languages, while Saami and Sanskrit words represent an older stage of this word meaning red.
 
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Actually I never said that Uralic languages originated in the tundra; I locate the homeland on the southern forest zone around the Volga-Kama fork. And I agree that Proto-Uralic speakers must have had some cultural advantage, so that they could replace Indo-European language in Northern Baltia, for example. Considering the time and place of Uralic expansion, Seima-Turbino bronze-trade network seems fitting.
Currently and 4,500 years ago Europe looked like this:
eur(pre.gif
(http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nercEUROPE.html)

According Gimbutas Corded pioneers managed to get as far as Southern Finland in their first expansion. However after some time their cultures in the dark green areas did not survive, they got assimilated by local populations and cultures. But in light green they survived. At least in Latvia even 3-4,000 years after (at 1,000 AD) the border between IE Balts and FU Estonians still was the same, one between dark green and light green.
So, I believe it was about forest types.

As to Balts and metals. Again based on Gimbutas Balts. Western Balts were first to use metals significantly, they profited from amber trade and got their metals from Central Europe. Whereas East Balts got introduced to metals later and they got their metals from Urals mainly. Tērauds (steel) in Latvian comes from Finno-Ugric language.
 
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Currently and 4,500 years ago Europe looked like this:
View attachment 6823
(http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nercEUROPE.html)

According Gimbutas Corded pioneers managed to get as far as Southern Finland in their first expansion. However after some time their cultures in the dark green areas did not survive, they got assimilated by local populations and cultures. But in light green they survived. At least in Latvia even 3-4,000 years after (at 1,000 AD) the border between IE Balts and FU Estonians still was the same, one between dark green and light green.
So, I believe it was about forest types.

As to Balts and metals. Again based on Gimbutas Balts. Western Balts were first to use metals significantly, they profited from amber trade and got their metals from Central Europe. Whereas East Balts got introduced to metals later and they got their metals from Urals mainly. Tērauds (steel) in Latvian comes from Finno-Ugric language.

The Corded Ware folk seem to have been a mixture of R1a folk from what is now central Russia and European Neolithic types. IMO, the N1c Uralic types arrived later.
 
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