 | Finno-Ugric languages: Encyclopedia II - Finno-Ugric languages - Origins
Finno-Ugric languages - Origins
The "Urheimat" of Proto-Finno-Ugric, the hypothetical proto-language of the modern Finno-Ugric languages, cannot be located with any certainty. The area which lies in what is now central and northern European Russia (i.e., west of the Ural mountains) is generally assumed as a likely candidate, at a time of maybe the 3rd millennium BC. This is based on the linguistic migration theory, which appears to suggest a "centre of gravity" somewhere around the middle Volga River, and on reconstructed plant and animal names (notably including spruce, Siberian pine, Siberian fir, Siberian larch, brittle willow/elm, and hedgehog). Reconstructed Proto-Finno-Ugric contains Indo-Iranian loanwords, notably the words for "honeybee" and "honey", probably from the time when Indo-Iranian tribes (such as Scythians and Sarmatians) inhabited the Eurasian steppes.
There is evidence that before the arrival of the Slavic speaking tribes to the area of modern-day Russia, speakers of Finno-Ugric languages may have been scattered across the whole area between the Urals and the Baltic Sea. This was the distribution of the Comb Ceramic Culture, a stone age culture which appears to have corresponded to the Finno-Ugric speaking populations, c. 4200 BC–c. 2000 BC.
There have been attempts to relate the Finno-Ugric languages to the Indo-European languages, but there are not enough similarities to link them with any certainty. Similar inflectional endings exist, but whether or not they are genetically related is not resolvable. Common lexicon not attestable to borrowing is thin, and no sound laws are established. Conversely, there have been suggestions that the Germanic languages evolved from an Indo-European language such as Celtic imposed on a Finnic substrate, but no satisfactory proof yet exists.
A portion of the Baltic-Finnic lexicon is not shared with the remaining Finno-Ugric languages and may be due to a pre-Finnic substrate, which may coincide in part with the substrate of the Indo-European Baltic languages. As far as the Sami (Lappic) languages are concerned, a hypothesis has been advanced that the ancestors of the Sami originally spoke a different language, but adopted their current tongue under the pressure of their Finnic-speaking neighbours.
According to data obtained in several representative studies on the genes of Europeans, strong presence of genetic lines which can be associated with the modern Finnic-speaking peoples are found throughout northern Europe from the British Isles to the Ural area.
According to the interpretation of the geneticists who conducted the study, the ancestors of modern Germanic and Slavic-speaking peoples were in fact largely speakers of Finno-Ugric languages at some earlier time. Weak presence of the genes which could associate them with, for example, the earliest Indo-European peoples indicates that the Indo-European languages were taken over from more advanced, but less numerous, newcomers as a part of "cultural package" at the time of the Neolithic Revolution - shift from gathering to agriculture. Thus, the Finno-Ugric languages and their modern speakers do not originate in the area near Ural mountains, but rather likely were one of the three indigenous European ethnic groups, which together provided about 80 % of modern European genetic material. Proto-Finno-Ugric was perhaps the original language of North-East Europe. Going back further in time, according to Kalevi Wiik, the earliest Finno-Ugric speakers and their languages were likely to originate from the territory of modern Ukraine (so-called “Ukrainian refuge”) during the last glacial period, when the whole northern Europe was covered with ice.
It should be noted that genes do not necessarily correlate with languages, and that many of the above interpretations given by the geneticists are not accepted by the majority of archaeologists and linguists, most of whom still put the Finno-Ugric Urheimat in the central or northeastern part of European Russia or the area of the Ural Mountains in the Bronze Age, identifying it with the Comb Ceramic culture. Wiik’s interpretation of Neolithic farmers as early Indo-Europeans also contradicts the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis.
Other related archives15th century, 1671, 1717, 1770, 1799, 1890s, 1990s, 19th century, 2000 BC, 3rd millennium BC, 4200 BC, Akkala Sami, Baltic Sea, Baltic languages, Baltic-Finnic, Bronze Age, Celtic, Chinese, Comb Ceramic Culture, Comb Ceramic culture, Eastern, English, Erzya, Estonian, Europe, Finnic, Finnish, Finno-Lappic, Finno-Permic, Finno-Volgaic, Georg Stiernhielm, German, Germania, Germanic languages, Hungarian, Inari Sami, Indo-European, Indo-European languages, Indo-European studies, Indo-Iranian, Ingrian Finnish, Izhorian, Jesuit, Karelian, Kemi Sami, Khanty, Kildin Sami, Komi, Komi-Permyak, Kurgan hypothesis, Kven Finnish, Leibniz, Livonian, Lude, Lule Sami, Lyle Campbell, Mansi, Mari, Merya, Meshcherian, Meänkieli, Moksha, Mordvinic, Muromian, Nilotic, Northern Sami, Olof Rudbeck, Olonets Karelian, Permic, Pite Sami, Proto-Finno-Ugric, References, Rosetta Project, Russia, Sami, Samoyedic, Samoyedic languages, Sarmatians, Scythians, Semitic, Seto, Siberian larch, Siberian pine, Skolt Sami, Slavic speaking tribes, Southern Sami, Swadesh lists, Swedish, Tacitus, Ter Sami, Turkic, Udmurt, Ugric, Ume Sami, Ural Mountains, Ural mountains, Ural-Altaic, Uralic languages, Uralo-Siberian languages, Urheimat, Veps, Vietnamese, Volga River, Votic, Võro, Yukaghir languages, acc., cases, cognates, conjugated, dat., declension, elm, genitive, glacial period, hedgehog, inflected, inflection, isolating languages, language isolate, loanwords, nom., possessive adjectives, possessive pronouns, prepositions, proto-language, reindeer, spruce, substrate, suffixes, under Russian rule, verbs
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Origins", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
