History Files
 

Please help the History Files

Contributed: £84

Target: £400

2023
Totals slider
2023

The History Files still needs your help. As a non-profit site, it is only able to support such a vast and ever-growing collection of information with your help, and this year your help is needed more than ever. Please make a donation so that we can continue to provide highly detailed historical research on a fully secure site. Your help really is appreciated.

European Kingdoms

Barbarians

 

Uralics

Uralic is a broad language family which covers wide areas of modern Northern Europe and Siberia. Daughters of Uralic languages are still spoken in Estonia and Finland, by many smaller groups which are located across Russia, and with one southern offshoot, Magyar, in Hungary.

In more detail, its spread includes the northern forests of Eurasia, from the Pacific shores of north-eastern Siberia (Nganasan, with a language which is spoken by tundra reindeer herders), to the Atlantic and Baltic coasts (the aforementioned Estonians and Finns, plus the absorbed Kvens (Kainu) and Sámi - usually shown in English text as Sami or Saami - and Karelians, Vepsians, and Votians).

Most linguists use the tree model to divide the Uralic language family at the root into two super-branches: Finno-Ugric (the western branch), and Samoyedic (the eastern branch). A counter-argument states that this division is based more on tradition than solid linguistic evidence, but the alternative 'flat' division of the language leaves nine branches in place of the two, otherwise known as the wave model. The latter school of thought also sees Finno-Permic languages having a much more distant relationship (if any) to Uralic (Tapani Salminen argues intelligibly for this school).

The tree model works best when people who are speaking a language become isolated from each other. So geographic or cultural isolation or a sessile lifestyle works best for tree models. The wave model works best for societies which intermingle constantly and have heavy social contact, so that trends in speech get copied across a large range. Therefore the wave model would be best applied to steppe dwellers (such as Indo-Europeans), and the tree model to forest dwellers (such as Uralics). That said, both models can be applied to any language which is breaking down into dialects and separating. It's merely a question of degree.

More pertinent was the search for a proto-Uralic homeland, a subject which has been fraught with problems. Thankfully a general consensus does seem to have been reached amongst most scholars. In fact, much of the work of locating the proto-Uralics has been done by pinpointing the homeland of the proto-Indo-Europeans (PIEs) on the Pontic-Caspian steppe, a question which in the past has been equally problematical but which also seems to have achieved a general level of consensus in recent decades.

The early speakers both of PIE and proto-Uralic lived in a world of tribal politics and social groups which were united through kinship and marriage. However, unlike the PIEs, the proto-Uralics did not accept the arrival of animal domestication in the late sixth millennium BC. It took them at least three thousand years longer to begin to domesticate animals.

If the proto-Indo-European homeland can be accepted as having been located on the aforementioned Pontic-Caspian steppe (the broad swathe of territory to the north of the Black Sea and Caspian Sea), then it's easier to pinpoint the proto-Uralics as well. The one question of any serious merit which remains is whether the core Uralic homeland was on the eastern or western side of the Ural Mountains. Either seems possible, and trying to track back through various Uralic dialectal splits does not help. The only reason for preferring the western side of the Urals here is due to interaction with the PIEs, who most definitely were located on the western side.

The proto-Uralic speakers have been identified as being neighbours of the PIEs through words and morphologies which were borrowed between PIE and other language families. It's a little risky to discuss borrowing between two proto-languages, especially when neither has survived in any written form, but once a phonological system has been constructed for each language (and experts have been working on this for the past couple of centuries) then it does become possible to identify roots which are of similar form and meaning. By far the strongest language linkages can be seen between PIE and Uralic.

Although the evidence is almost invisible in the surviving daughter languages, there is the possibility that both languages - PIE and proto-Uralic - originated in a very distant and broad set of primitive language stocks which could be termed 'Eurasiatic' (a term coined by Joseph Greenberg). Some common words are still very similar today, such as 'mama / ema' (English / Estonian). The PIE version of this word also exists in proposed proto-Celtic as *mammā-, while the Estonian form descends from the proposed proto-Uralic *emä.

Proto-Uralic could also have existed in a late post-Eurasiatic form, known as pre-proto-Uralic, on both sides of the Urals. This is argued on the basis of early contacts with the Yukaghir languages which are now spoken only in two small corners of the Russian far north-east, in the River Kolyma basin.

The homeland of proto-Uralic was therefore probably in the forest zone which was centred on the southern flanks of the Ural Mountains. The arguments for a western or eastern side of the mountains can largely be laid aside because almost all Uralic linguists and Ural-region archaeologists seem to agree that proto-Uralic was spoken somewhere in the birch-pine forests between the River Oka on the west (around modern Nizhny Novgorod (formerly Gorky), which river feeds into the Volga) and the River Irtysh on the east (around modern Omsk).

As foragers, the proto-Uralics would have drifted into the eastern side of the mountains too - after all, they were not tied down by herds or farms. Today, those Uralic languages which are spoken in this core region include, from east to west, Mordvin, Mari, Udmurt, Komi, and Mansi, of which two (Udmurt and Komi) are stems on the same branch (Permian).

As if to contradict the above, recent genetic testing of living peoples, and ancient remains, are pointing in a slightly different direction from the standing north-of-Caucasian Mountains origin for Indo-Europeans, and this impinges upon the origins of the Uralics. Males carry and transmit via their Y chromosome the history of male migration, critical for tracing the movements of warrior societies. Indo-European Y chromosomes carry two primary 'flavours', called R1a and R1b by geneticists. R1a is found strongly in Slavs, Balts, and Indo-Iranians, and is mixed with R1b in Germanic-speaking peoples. The geographic distribution in ancient times for R1a is European Russia just west of the Ural Mountains.

What we have is an origin in the Russian forest and forest-steppes for half the Indo-Europeans (those linguistically matching the satum branch of Indo-European languages (proto-Balts and proto-Slavs especially), and occupying half the territory which had previously been assigned to Uralics). It remains to be seen whether this DNA-based theory will supersede the established linguistics theory, although it at least partially fits in with known origins for Balts and Slavs anyway.

Seto People of Estonia

(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information by Edward Dawson, from The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, David W Anthony, from Early Contacts between Uralic and Yukaghir, Jaakko Häkkinen (2012), from the Proto-Celtic English Wordlist, from Uralic Evidence for the Indo-European Homeland, Jaakko Häkkinen (2012), from the Encyclopaedia of Indo-European Culture, J P Mallory & D Q Adams (Eds, 1997), from On the Edge of the World, Nikolaĭ Semenovich Leskov, from The Histories, Herodotus (Penguin, 1996), and from External Link: Problems in the taxonomy of the Uralic languages in light of modern comparative studies, Tapani Salminen (2002 - dead link).)

c.5000 BC?

The reconstructed proto-Uralic vocabulary suggests that its speakers live far from the sea, in a forest environment. They are foragers (another way of saying hunter-gatherer) who hunt and fish but who possess no domesticated plants or animals except the dog.

This correlates well with archaeological evidence which is bracketed into the Lyalovo culture of the same period, a centre of cultural influences and interchanges amongst forest-zone forager cultures.

River Belaia in the southern Urals
The ancient forest at the foot of the southern Ural Mountains would have emerged after the end of the most recent ice age - the River Belaia in the southern Urals is shown here - and soon provided a home to the foraging humans who became the proto-Uralics

The proto-Uralic language (or group of languages) shows a division which later emerges as proto-Samoyedic and proto-Finno-Ugric. Reconstructed proto-Finno-Ugric contains few differences from proto-Uralic, and proto-Uralic after this period gains several loan words from proto-Indo-European (PIE).

General opinion has the proto-Samoyedic-speakers dividing first, and later Samoyedic languages do not contain the PIE loan words which Uralic languages contain. So it seems the proto-Samoyedics soon begin a migratory drift towards the north and east, into Siberia, leaving the remaining proto-Uralics where they grouped along the Urals. Today the Samoyedics are strongly intermingled amongst Tungusic peoples.

Only about two hundred words of proto-Uralic can be reconstructed for the period prior to this split, and it may be the case that there is no split at all. One theory which opposes a shared origin is that the two groups could neighbour one another close to the Ural Mountains rather than being components of a single group.

This theory has proto-Samoyedic speakers borrowing proto-Uralic words prior to their migration and comparative isolation thereafter (to produce the grammatically-conservative Samoyed vocabulary). The issue is still very much up in the air, despite previous certainties.

A Nanai family
This Nanai family of Tungusic people was photographed early in the twentieth century in a formal studio setting, something which would have felt relatively alien to them

c.4500 BC

In this period Uralic languages show the aforementioned very early contact with Indo-European languages (PIE), which can be interpreted in three main ways. Shared words include the ancestors of 'water' (in English) and 'vesi' (in Estonian) which have been reconstructed as *wete in proto-Uralic, from *wed-er/en' in PIE ('water, river').

Another is the word 'name' and 'nimi' in the same languages, originating in a reconstructed *nime in proto-Uralic from PIE *h3neh3mn'. The first way of interpreting these very fundamental words - the Indo-Uralic hypothesis - is to state that they must be inherited at a very early stage, probably before the appearance of the proto languages in the fifth millennium. Instead they can be ascribed to a 'grandmother' tongue.

The second way - the 'early loan' hypothesis - is to argue that the shared roots must be later or they would exhibit greater degrees of sound shift across the centuries. Instead they can be explained as loan words from one language to the other. In this case the loan words would have been from PIE to proto-Uralic, because forager groups do not loan words to farming groups. It is always the other way around (give or take the odd surviving forager relic word).

Proto-Indo-European spiral city
Professor Gennady Zdanovich recently (2010) made fresh discoveries on the modern Kazakhstan steppe of Bronze Age 'spiral' cities which exhibit many signs of having been built and used by Indo-Europeans, around 2000 BC

The third theory - the 'late loan' hypothesis - argues for a much later loan date which post-dates the Indo-European migrations and the formation of its daughter languages. This theory is easily dismissed.

3300 - 3100 BC

To the immediate south of the forest domain of the proto-Uralics lies the Pontic-Caspian steppe. At this time the proto-Indo-European people there are undergoing great social changes. The relatively new sight of horse-drawn wagons creaking and swaying across the grasslands of the steppes amid herds of woolly sheep tends to change during this period from one of weird fascination to a normal part of steppe life.

At about the same time the climate on the steppe becomes significantly drier and generally cooler than it had been during the Eneolithic. The shift to drier conditions is dated between 3500-3000 BC in pollen cores in the lower Don, the middle Volga, and across the northern Kazakh steppe.

Bigger pastures and a mobile home amongst the emerging Yamnaya groups leads to bigger herds. Amid ensuing disputes over borders, pastures, and seasonal movements, new rules are needed to define what counts as an acceptable move.

People begin to manage local migratory behaviour. Those who do not participate in these agreements or recognise the new rules become cultural outsiders (mostly foragers to the north of the steppe which includes the proto-Uralics).

Ancient wagon
This primitive wagon was unearthed at Lchashen, on the western shore of Lake Sevan in modern Armenia in the South Caucasus, but the style would have been very similar in the North Caucasus and on the steppe

Despite seemingly being on the edges of this cultural explosion, the proto-Uralics themselves may either be stimulated by it, or forced farther afield by it, outwards from their ancestral forest homeland into new territories to the north and north-west.

c.3000 BC

The spoken range of proto-Uralic language begins to expand. With the proto-Samoyedic speakers already long having shifted away from them, groups of proto-Uralics now begin a drift northwards and westwards, towards the Barents Sea and the Baltic coastline. Others remain largely where they are as the ancestors of, from east to west, the Mordvin, Mari, Udmurt, Komi, and Mansi groups.

It is also around this time that the Finno-Permic group of languages divides from Finno-Ugric. Despite the validity of Finno-Permic being questioned in recent times, it is still highly useful as a definition. Ugric itself (named after Yugra, a region in northern-Central Asia), remains consolidated until the early centuries of the first millennium BC, before developing into Khanty, Magyar, and Mansi.

Khanty and Mansi are largely considered to be one language with distinct dialectal divisions. During this time Ugric populations occupy territory between western Siberia and the Ural Mountains.

Moving in the opposite direction, the Comb Ceramic culture reaches what becomes the tribal regions of the Prussians, Estonians and Finns as new peoples arrive here from the east, almost certainly the Finno-Ugric tribes who form the later core of today's Finland and Estonia.

Comb Ceramic pottery
The pottery of the Comb Ceramic culture (also known as Pit-Comb Ware) - a widespread cultural expression of far north-eastern Europe's foragers between the Baltic Sea and the Ural Mountains - shows the typical comb imprints which gave the culture its name

This includes Estonians, Finns, Karelians, Livs, Wots, Weps, and Ingrians, whilst leaving behind a large swathe of Finno-Ugric tribes across today's northern Russia. Some of these later absorb even more marginal Sámi groups.

This Neolithic culture seems to form on the basis of the previous Mesolithic cultures, but uses a greater variety of bone, antler and stone implements, and employs boring, drilling, and abrading skills. Proto-Lapponoid skeletons from this period have been found by archaeologists, showing that the Mesolithic blended Mongoloid/Europeans live alongside the new arrivals and bear a certain similarity to Siberian Finno-Ugric peoples (of the Samoyed division of Ugric-speakers). It has been suggested that they originate around the region of Lake Ladoga and that they disperse over a wide area.

Comb Ceramic culture brings with it pottery but no farming, which is unusual by this stage of European history. Most migratory people have picked up at least the basics of farming and animal husbandry, the latter now primarily focussed around the horse (for mobility) and sheep (for wool).

In large areas of East Europe, at least, pottery has come hand-in-hand with farming via its Anatolian/Greek feeder route, the Sesklo culture, but the people of the Comb Ceramic exhibit older influences from farther east, with farming not yet having been adopted at all.

Sesklo culture ruins
The earliest settlement finds in the village of Sesklo are dated at about 7000 BC, a proto-phase of the Neolithic Sesklo culture to which this village gave its name in the archaeological record

after c.2500 BC

Proto-Uralic people begin to domesticate animals. As this is well after the core migration of proto-Indo-Europeans (PIE) and the formation of its daughter languages - therefore rendering proto-Indo-European itself a dead language - no loan words for farming can be borrowed from PIE.

However, the proto-Uralics have already borrowed an odd assortment of words prior to the PIE migration, including 'to wash, price, to give, to sell', probably through a trade jargon used by the two groups in former times. They may also be influenced by proto-Indo-Iranian through the still extant Poltavka Bronze Age culture of the middle Volga.

c.2000 BC

Around this time the Finno-Permic group of languages further divides into the Finno-Volgaic and Permic languages. Proto-Uralic languages between the Ural Mountains and western Siberia now experience some expansion (this date being considerably later than previous views of proto-Uralic expansion).

Speakers of the many various groups of proto-Uralic daughter languages still follow a largely peaceful existence. In general they remain untroubled by conquerors and invaders for the next three thousand years, and only briefly intrude upon written history in that time.

Rybynsk Sea, on the Volga
The upper Volga basin to the west of the Urals - roughly midway between Ryazan and St Petersburg in modern Russia - has been occupied by modern humans since at least 14,000 BC

During this same period, and later too, Finno-Ugrics living in the neighbourhood of the Balts become to a certain degree Indo-Europeanised. Over the course of several millennia, particularly during the Early Iron Age and the first centuries AD, the Finno-Ugrian culture in the upper Volga basin and north of the River Daugava-Dvina becomes adapted to food production. Even the habitat pattern - arranging villages on hills and the building of rectangular houses - is borrowed from the Balts.

500s BC

A few Finno-Ugric tribes along the northern Scythian border can be identified in this century thanks to Herodotus. His account of a Persian campaign against the Scythians also mentions and Androphagi and Melanchlaeni. However, they would appear to be highly disrupted by the campaign, while subsequent Slav expansion will add further disruption.

AD 100s - 400s

Between the second and fifth centuries AD the material standards of the Baltic culture rise tremendously, due to intensive amber trade with the provinces of the Roman empire. Archaeological finds demonstrate how for centuries bronze and iron tools and ornaments are exported from the Balts to Uralic-speaking Finno-Ugrian lands. The western Finnic (including the mysterious Hellusii and Oxiones), the Mari, and Mordvin areas are flooded with or strongly influenced by ornaments which are typical of the Baltic culture.

Where the long history of Baltic-Finno-Ugrian relations is concerned, language and archaeological sources go hand-in-hand, and Baltic loan words into Volga-Finnic languages pay witness to this.

Amber beads
The amber trade of which the Balts were the masters meant that amber beads would end up in all sorts of places after travelling through the trade network - these beads ended up in the Near East

However, the Baltic golden age begins to fade from around the end of the fourth century or in the early part of the fifth century, as eastern Slav expansion reaches the Baltic lands in what is now western Russia. The gradual influx of Slavs continues right up until the twelfth century and onwards, also impacting greatly upon Finno-Ugric groups.

565

The Hephthalites are defeated in Kushanshah South Asia (now within Afghanistan) by an alliance of the Western Göktürks and the Sassanids. The Western Göktürks set up rival states in Bamiyan, Kabul, and Kapisa, strengthening their hold on the Silk Road from a viceroyalty which is based in Tokharistan. However, their empire barely infringes upon the vast northern territories of the Finno-Ugrics and Samoyedic-speakers.

Great Khagan Mukhan himself is responsible for securing the khaganate's borders against the last of the Rouran, and defeating the Khitan (founders of the later Qara-Khitaï empire) and the Kyrgyz people. In the far west the empire now counts amongst its vassals the Khazars and the Magyars. The latter are (or now become) horsemen who are based in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, seemingly serving as auxiliaries of the Khazars.

Map of Central Asia AD 550-600
As was often the case with Central Asian states which had been created by horse-borne warriors on the sweeping steppelands, the Göktürk khaganate swiftly incorporated a vast stretch of territory in its westwards expansion, whilst being hemmed in by the powerful Chinese dynasties to the south-east and Siberia's uninviting tundra to the north (click or tap on map to view full sized)

But these Magyars are far from typical Turkic mounted warriors (the Turks themselves have partially Indo-European roots). It is generally accepted that this name, 'magyar', is a compound which is made up of the indigenous denomination of the Voguls and Ostiaks and a Turkish word meaning 'man'.

The Magyar tribal confederation seems to comprise eight tribes, of which at least six have names of Turkic origin. They speak a Uralic language which is ultimately related to Finno-Ugric. By the end of the ninth century, they migrate into Hungary, probably after having lived for some centuries amongst Turkic-speaking tribes.

600s

The Finnic-speaking tribes of the Baltic coast are beginning to change. They have recently begun to enjoy a period of relative wealth and prosperity earned through strong trading contacts with the heart of Europe, notably with the court of the Ostrogothic king of Italy, Theodoric the Great.

This extends equally to their neighbours, the tribes of the Balts (such as Lats and Lithuanians). Around this time, the Unguenois people of southern Estonia erect a fortress by the name of Tarbatu on the east side of the Dome Hill (Toomemägi - approximately where the Astronomical Observatory now stands). Presumably this is in response to an external threat, probably to their newly-acquired wealth.

Map of Norway
This map shows a host of the many petty Norwegian kingdoms in eighth and ninth century Scandinavia, most of them arranged along the coastline, although penetration into the interior is clearly beginning (click or tap on map to view full sized)

Farther north, the Sámi group of Finno-Ugric speakers is still pursuing its traditional hunter-gather mode of living, although now these tribes are coming into contact with Norse traders along the coast of Norway. Trading posts crop up, usually during the summer, but in time these turn into permanent posts and then minor kingdoms, such as that of Finnmark in the northernmost reaches of Norway.

1186

The Danes are busy securing their hold over North Estonia while the rest of the Baltic region is undergoing the same process from the south. What is now Estonia and Latvia quickly come to be governed by German prince-bishops in Courland, Dorpat, Ösel-Wiek and, governing the heart of later Latvia, the prince-bishop of Riga.

The Order of the Knights of the Sword conquers the rest of what is now Latvia and central Estonia. The captured territory between Danish Estonia and Lithuania becomes known as Livonia.

During this period, important ethnic changes are taking place among the peoples of the Baltics. Within the confines of Livonia, the fusion of the local Balts into one people begins their development into today's Latvians. The assimilation of the Finno-Ugric Livs or Livonians also begins, although they manage to leave their mark on Latvian language and culture.

Udmurt people of the Permian group of Finno-Ugrics
Finno-Ugric Permian speakers initially occupied the upper and middle River Kama before dividing into two branches at some point in the 700s-900s AD and expanding eastwards from there - today's Udmurt branch still live in their ancient homelands (and contain a surprising number of redheads)

2016

Uralic-speaking groups still exist and can be readily identified. Over time, mainly through migration and external circumstances, the main body of Uralic speakers has split into two divisions - the Finno-Ugric peoples who are located largely, but not completely, to the west of the Urals, and the Samoyedic peoples who are located largely, but not completely, to the east of the Urals.

Of those two divisions, the western one is itself divided into two main branches. The first, the Finnic group, has four sub-divisions of its own, these being the absorbed Sámi, the highly fragmented Baltic Finns, the Volga Finns, and the Permians (who are located on both sides of the northern Ural Mountains). The second main branch is the Ugric one. This consists of the Ob-Ugric peoples (the Khantys and Mansi), and the Magyars.

The Sámi cover northern Scandinavia - originally a pre-Finno-Ugric Uralic-speaking people who have absorbed and adopted a Finnic tongue. The Baltic Finns include Estonians, Finns, Ingrians (between modern Estonia's River Narva and Russia's Lake Ladoga), Karelians (mostly in the Russian republic of Karelia, between the Baltic Sea and the White Sea, bordering the Finns to their west), Livonians (southern Estonia and northern Latvia), Vepsians (generally south of the Karelians and east of the Ingrians, with the Permians lying to their east), and Votians (immediately east of Estonia).

Map of East Asia and Siberia around 3500 BC
Tungusic migration from around the River Amur towards Lake Baikal and Siberia seems to have begun around 3500 BC, perhaps tentatively at first, and continuing over at least the next two or three millennia (click or tap on map to view full sized)

The Volga Finns include the Mari (largely located along the Kama and Volga rivers and in the Mari El republic, all in modern Russia), and also the Mordvins (partially of Russia's republic of Mordovia), who themselves are subdivided into the Erzya (eastern branch) and Moksha (western branch), and many smaller groups. The Permians (formerly known as Bjarmians) include the Komis (once known as Zyrians) and Udmurts.

The eastern division is the Samoyed group. This largely inhabits Siberia, being made up of the Northern Samoyed (the Enets, Nenets, and Nganasan, all in wide swathes of territory along the coast of the Kara Sea and all today scattered between populations of Tungusic peoples), and the Southern Samoyed (the Selkups - also living between Tungusic groups, as well as being the most easterly group of Ugrics), plus the Sayan Samoyed who no longer exist.

 
Images and text copyright © all contributors mentioned on this page. An original king list page for the History Files.