Indigeneity of Europeans

[Turbino]

The concept of "indigenous people" in this context is not connected to who's gene's came where first, its based on their connection to a pre-modern culture of subsistence. I do understand that many ethnonationalists are peeved at hearing someone, especially someone like the Sami who they consider to be alien to Europe, be considered indigenous when your own identity is firmly connected with nativity, but this one is a fight that makes no sense and a hill not worth dying for.

It's worth noting how "European HGs" and "Neolithic farmers" are invoked here, as if the Sami dont have that ancestry as well. Just come out and say it, you consider them alien because they are not full Caucasoids.

 

[EV13SON]

I came across an interesting video that described the Cheddar man as a good example of the first indigenous of our species into Europe, now they claim he had blue eyes and very swarthy skin almost resembling an Australoid, I would be inclined to believe that they probably couldn't maintain large populations, however the video theorizes the next migration came from the Beaker People and other Neolithic farming groups then the Horse and chariot Yamnaya..of course at what point do you identify a people as being the first culturally distinct European...is there a distinction between Northern and Southern European? Because those are very distinct cultures...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxWkM0e9-7s&t=1587s

 

[Angela]

The concept of "indigenous people" in this context is not connected to who's gene's came where first, its based on their connection to a pre-modern culture of subsistence. I do understand that many ethnonationalists are peeved at hearing someone, especially someone like the Sami who they consider to be alien to Europe, be considered indigenous when your own identity is firmly connected with nativity, but this one is a fight that makes no sense and a hill not worth dying for.

It's worth noting how "European HGs" and "Neolithic farmers" are invoked here, as if the Sami dont have that ancestry as well. Just come out and say it, you consider them alien because they are not full Caucasoids.

I haven't read the whole thread, but it wouldn't at all surprise me if that's indeed the case. I sometimes wonder what percentage of people in this hobby are NOT racists of one form or another. I'm beginning to think it's very small.

 

[carmenfalkon]

I also wonder why people attach so much importance to their race

 

[Maciamo]

I agree that it is ridiculous to consider the Saami the only indigenous people of Europe. Saami language and culture are Siberian and only arrived in Fennoscandia some time between 1000 and 500 BCE, well after the Indo-European cultures and languages had spread all over the rest of Europe. Genetically the Saami and the Finns are the only Europeans with substantial (>5% for the Finns and >20% for the Saami) Mongoloid autosomal DNA, and a majority (>50% for both the Finns and Saami) of Mongoloid/Siberian paternal lineages.

 

[billyh]

and the other europeans are for the most part descended from near eastern populations. why should Sami not be indigenous? also europe doesn't end with scandinavia. it goes a lot further northeast.

as for why the other europeans arenßt called indigenous i think it's because indiginous only applies to people who were native to a region and then got conquered by another population but continued to live at least to some extent with their own culture next to the conquerors.

I don’t think Saami are not indigenous because they come from somewhere else, but they are less indigenous than Scandinavians because the genetic formation of Scandinavians and their settlement into Scandinavia (and the formation of early Germanic probably) occurred before Saami ever got there.

As for your definition of indigenous, that is certainly a more practical definition but it is hardly the image meant to conjure in peoples minds when the word is used. Wikipedia and the dictionary definition say Indigenes are the first inhabitants of a region, and it is hard not to associate it with a sense of primacy when words such as “First Nations” and “First Peoples” are used in its place.

But this definition too could cause rather strange uses of the word. What classifies as conquering? Does this apply to settlers of an ancien regime, or people who lost their socio-political hegemony through relatively peaceful migration? Would this make Afrikaners indigenous peoples of Transvaal, now that it they no longer have control of the South African government? I mean, I am sure many “Indigenous Americans” did not settle in their current “tribal lands” until well after the Great Trek, due to being pushed westward.

 

[Luso]

Isn't there close relationship to Berbers?

This paper found a link in maternal lineages:

"Such a recent common ancestry of maternal lineages found in populations living as far as 9,000 miles apart and whose anthropological affinities are not at all obvious is, to say the least, unexpected. Can we provide a reasonable explanation? The recent molecular dissection of other mtDNA haplogroups reveals some clues. H1 and H3, two frequent subhaplogroups of H, display frequency peaks centered in Iberia and surrounding populations, including the Berbers of Morocco, and coalescence ages of ∼11 ky (Achilli et al. 2004). Furthermore, their frequency patterns and ages resemble those reported for haplogroup V (Torroni et al. 2001a)—which, similar to U5b1b, is extremely common only in the Saami (together, U5b1b and V encompass almost 90% of the Saami mtDNAs) (Torroni et al. 1996; Tambets et al. 2004). Thus, although these previous studies have highlighted the role of the Franco-Cantabrian refuge area as a major source of the hunter-gatherer populations that gradually repopulated much of central and northern Europe when climatic conditions began to improve ∼15 ky ago, the identification of U5b1b now unequivocally links the maternal gene pool of the ancestral Berbers to the same refuge area and indicates that European hunter-gatherers also moved toward the south and, by crossing the Strait of Gibraltar, contributed their U5b1b, H1, H3, and V mtDNAs to modern North Africans."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1199377/

Not sure how accurate this information is, or if new information has come out regarding it. Of course, we are talking thousands of years ago!

 

[matadworf]

You are spot on.

 

[matadworf]

Saying today's Europeans are not indigenous in comparison to Sami, is wrong in three points:
First point: The Sami ancestors migrated in the Bronze Age into Europe, while Neolithic Farmers and European HGs migrated much earlier.
Second point: Saying there was no Scandinavian Nation, but Sami Nation, is wrong, because it is very unlikely that the Sami founded any kind of modern Nation before the native Scandinavians did. They lived in tribes, while Europe already had bigger tribal complexes and some kind of nations/large cultural complexes over distant areas.
Who lived in Scandinavia before the arrival of the Sami? Funnel Beaker, Pitted Ware for example, which are both related to modern Scandinavians.
Third point: Saying today's Europeans are not indigenous, because they descended from Bronze Age immigrants is wrong. Those immigrants where not a completely genetic different race/ethnicity, but already a mix of EEF, ANE and HG populations.
Their total genetic impact on today's populations besides Y-Haplogroups is low. Most Europeans still carry the neolithic allele variants for many traits, because they where superior for a modern lifestyle.
Ancestry components that are used today to predict the origin of people, are mostly not trait related SNPs and do not correspond with them.
The occurrence of more and more depigmentation variants is not associated with Bronze Age migration, but with later cultural/environmental changes that favored them. The alleles for blonde hair, light skin and blue eyes where already present in SHG, Anatolia HG and ANE. There is no single ancient population that had a blonde, blue eyed and light skinned man as their main phenotype and conquered all others.
Saying they are no more indigenous, because there was an invasion, is like saying today's Native American tribes are not native anymore, because they often have European haplogroups and admixture, or saying Afro Americans are not Africans anymore.
The Sami are part indigenous, because they lived here for a long long time, but all other Europeans are indigenous too and most are much more indigenous then the Sami.

Totally agree with this^^

 

[Niceguy12]

I believe that all the descendants of HG who came to Europe millennia ago are indigenous Europeans.

 

[matadworf]

I believe that all the descendants of HG who came to Europe millennia ago are indigenous Europeans.

There were waves of HGs that were historically replaced by other HG groups over time most of which have no genetic relevance to modern Euros. Modern Euros have minimal HG admixture compared to later migrations.