Proto-Samoyed homeland

This post is part of a draft on South Siberian language homelands and Sprachbünde.

The following text contains a description of Pre- and Proto-Samoyedic stages and its dialectal diversification. Contacts with Indo-Iranian, Yeniseian, Tocharian, Yukaghir, and Turkic, as well as onomastics and palaeolinguistics are taken into account to pinpoint the succeeding homelands and expansion territories. The archaeological-archaeogenetic discussion is focused on the Middle Bronze Age Cherkaskul materials of the Andronovo period, on the Late Bronze Age Karasuk culture, and on the evolution and expansion of the Iron Age Tagar culture within the framework of “Scytho-Siberian” … Read the rest “Proto-Samoyed homeland”

Ob-Ugric Homeland

< PreviousNext >

This post is part of a draft on South Siberian language homelands and Sprachbünde.

The following text contains a description of Ob-Ugric languages and their connection within an Ugric Sprachbund. Special emphasis is placed on their evolution among surrounding ethnolinguistic groups before they were first documented, and on their most likely connection with archaeological cultures succeeding the Seima-Turbino phenomenon in the Southern Urals and the Trans-Urals. The archaeological-archaeogenetic discussion is therefore focused on the Middle Bronze Age Cherkaskul and Late Bronze Age Andronovo-like cultures, as well as on the formation of the “Scythian” Sargat … Read the rest “Ob-Ugric Homeland”

Proto-Yeniseian Homeland

< PreviousNext >

This post is part of a draft on South Siberian language homelands and Sprachbünde.

The following text contains a description of Yeniseian languages, their dialectal groupings and likely evolution among surrounding ethnolinguistic groups before they were first documented. Special emphasis is placed on ancient Yeniseic formants for water bodies, widely distributed through Western, Southern, and Central Siberia. Finally, the archaeological-archaeogenetic discussion is focused on Early Bronze Age Glazkovo-related and Okunevo-like cultures, due to their patrilineal connection to sampled Yeniseian and ancient Na-Dene populations.

Yeniseian languages

Evolution and Contacts
Hydronymy

Archaeology and population genomics

Glazkovo culture

… Read the rest

South Siberian Urheimaten and Sprachbünde

Next >

The long-lasting intertwined ethnolinguistic developments of East Uralic speakers with Palaeo-Siberian populations makes it impossible to split up a post about the evolution of the former without discussing the fate of the latter.

External contacts with other indigenous East Asian languages close to the Altai-Sayan region and Circum-Baikal area are also relevant, but would no doubt turn this post series into an unending task. Therefore, I will focus on the western part of the Baikal Neolithic and Neo-Siberian-related ancestry clines, which seem more relevant for the ancient stages of Ob-Ugric and Samoyed developments.

For an easier read of … Read the rest “South Siberian Urheimaten and Sprachbünde”

Proto-Uralic Homeland (VI): Mythology & Metallurgy

< PreviousNext >

This post is part of a draft on palaeolinguistics and the Proto-Uralic homeland. See below for the color code of protoforms.

10. Metallurgy

PU (Saa., Fi., Md., Ma., P, Ms.?, Kh., Smy.?) *wäśkä (*waśki?) ‘copper; ore, brass’ (UEW Nº 1123; Kallio 2006: 6). Irregular cognates suggest it might have been borrowed during the split-up of Proto-Uralic (cf. Aikio 2015: 42). However, compare potentially regular cognates from *wäskä in PFi. *vaski ‘ore, copper, bronze; brass’ (Kallio 2012: 167; Zhivlov 2014: 115), PSaa. *weśkä ‘copper; brass’, Md. Kazhlodka viśkä ‘chain’ (Häkkinen 2012: 18), and possibly Hu. … Read the rest “Proto-Uralic Homeland (VI): Mythology & Metallurgy”

R1b-rich Proto-Indo-Europeans show genetic continuity in Asia

Another preprint came out at the same time as Wang et al. (2020), from the Jena Lab of the Max Planck Society: A dynamic 6,000-year genetic history of Eurasia’s Eastern Steppe, by Jeong, Warinner, et al. bioRxiv (2020).

NOTE. I have now updated the Ancient DNA Dataset, the Prehistory Atlas – with PDF and GIS files including Y-DNA and mtDNA of all newly reported samples (starting with the Neolithic) – as well as the PCA files with those from Wang et al. (2020).

The conclusions are similar, but with some interesting twists. Relevant excerpts (emphasis mine), … Read the rest “R1b-rich Proto-Indo-Europeans show genetic continuity in Asia”

Corded Ware—Uralic (IV): Hg R1a and N in Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic expansions

This is the fourth of four posts on the Corded Ware—Uralic identification:

Let me begin this final post on the Corded Ware—Uralic connection with an assertion that should be obvious to everyone involved in ethnolinguistic identification of prehistoric populations but, for one reason or another, is usually forgotten. In the words of David Reich, in Who We Are and How We Got … Read the rest “Corded Ware—Uralic (IV): Hg R1a and N in Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic expansions”

Corded Ware—Uralic (III): “Siberian ancestry” and Ugric-Samoyedic expansions

This is the third of four posts on the Corded Ware—Uralic identification. See

An Eastern Uralic group?

Even though proposals of an Eastern Uralic (or Ugro-Samoyedic) group are in the minority – and those who support it tend to search for an origin of Uralic in Central Asia – , there is nothing wrong in supporting this from the point of view … Read the rest “Corded Ware—Uralic (III): “Siberian ancestry” and Ugric-Samoyedic expansions”

R1a-Z280 lineages in Srubna; and first Palaeo-Balkan R1b-Z2103?

Scythian samples from the North Pontic area are far more complex than what could be seen at first glance. From the new Y-SNP calls we have now thanks to the publications at Molgen (see the spreadsheet) and in Anthrogenica threads, I think this is the basis to work with:

NOTE. I understand that writing a paper requires a lot of work, and probably statistical methods are the main interest of authors, editors, and reviewers. But it is difficult to comprehend how any user of open source tools can instantly offer a more complex assessment of the samples’ Y-SNP … Read the rest “R1a-Z280 lineages in Srubna; and first Palaeo-Balkan R1b-Z2103?”