Talk:Proto-Uralic homeland

Untitled
I started this page in April 16th 2012. --Jaakko Häkkinen (talk) 16:25, 16 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Thank You.
 * Later editors too often tend to describe the view of single authors as being the general view which should be avoided. I corrected some cases by inserting the concrete authors.HJJHolm (talk) 16:27, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Inoperative address and references of Jaakko Häkkinen
Regrettably, your own references seem to be cancelled and no longer accessable always in a few months. This is of little help. Please try to refer to STABLE addresses!! (The same refers to your e-mail addresses, of which two different ones have been returned to me). HJJHolm (talk) 13:58, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
 * He has indeed recently relocated his homepage and email. I've corrected the links in this article… I believe the links pointing elsewhere continue to work? -- Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 01:55, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Pit–Comb Ware culture
I've seen many articles online that have mentioned Proto-Uralic being associated with the spread of the Pit–Comb Ware culture, or as spreading from a culture within the Comb Ceramic cultural complex. Based off genetic and linguistic evidence, a hypothesis like this is supported with a reasonable amount of evidence. It would also account for words of Uralic origin in the Baltic languages and in certain Russian place names and dialects.

Should it be mentioned more enthusiastically as a homeland hypothesis? I want to hear someone's input on this...--Lisztrachmaninovfan (talk) 07:42, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
 * It's already mentioned in the section "Continuity theories" under its synonym "Combed Ware culture". If there are actual sources arguing for this position, no problem in including them, but I don't remember offhand if there actually are any, or if this is yet another canonized offhand suggestion. -- Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 01:44, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Evidence from population genetics?
Lot is written about genetics, but non of the sources doesn't seem to link it to Uralic homeland. Original research? --Minnekon (talk) 20:49, 17 September 2017 (UTC)
 * This source does, although I have serious doubts about its reliability. Finstergeist (talk) 20:06, 27 January 2020 (UTC)


 * The sentence, "The characteristic genetic marker of Uralic-speaking peoples is haplogroup N1c-Tat (Y-DNA), also known as N-M46." attests for very poor knowledge of the writer, because the deciding marker (and NOT "also known" is M46, while the tree description changes every year and is today, according to ISOGG 2020, N1a1.HJHolm (talk) 15:26, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree, it is original research, and today (stand 2022 June) it is even worse. I am going to remove inconsistencies and unrelated information about haplogroups.Jäkke34 (talk) 08:13, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Inconsistencies and original research, source forgery at genetic evidence
I have just read the article and cited references and found that much of the written content does not correspond to the given references. Especially concerning is the content forgery at genetic evidence, which links various haplogroups and possibly places of origin to the homeland and spread of Uralic languages. Multiple sources are used to build up an paragraph unrelated to the topic and not concerned with the Uralic homeland at all. This is forgery and synthesis, without being related to the topic of the article.

Than, recently a user included two paragraphs[] about affinity to Tungusic, Turkic and other Siberian languages, as well as a paragraph about Nganasan genetics and how this putative Nganasan ancestry is the source of Uralic languages and found in all Uralic-speaking populations. However nothing of these claims are supported by the references. They do not even speak about proto-Uralic or its homeland at all.

Another paragraph, in which it is claimed that Uralic originated in the Altai-Sayan region, does not correspond with the reference either. It is a very good paper and relevant for the article, but it must be cited correctly. Here:[]. The authors concluded that the region of Western Siberia (West Siberian hunter gatherers) can be associated with proto-Uralic homeland, with Uralic languages expanding west and eastwards respectively. Uralic may either be a distant sister language to Indo-European, or stood in considerable contact. In both cases, "Common Uralic" (not identical with the earlier Proto-Uralic), stood in additional areal contact with Indo-Iranian.

Therefore I suggest to overwork the article according to the references, and remove the content forgery in the genetic section.Jäkke34 (talk) 08:11, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
 * It's a great idea to "overwork the article according to the references". Stick to it. Don't introduce WP:synthesis by inserting mentions to WSHG (= "Western Siberian hunter-gatherers", a Mesolithic population represented by samples from Tyumen dated around 7kya in a paper by Narasimhan et al. from 2019) everyhwere when the sources only speak about genetically unspecified hunter-gatherers in western Siberia (Grünthal et al.) or vaguely ANE-related populations (Wong et al.). –Austronesier (talk) 21:22, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Unacceptable generalization
Naturally, we have to thank the authors for the many good informations in this article. However, a 2007 paper of ONE scientist, here Jaako Häkkinen [the author here under varying sockets?], does never justify the following, "... because the Ugric languages are known to have been spoken earlier on the European side of the Urals, ...". NOTHING "is known", but rather speculated.

Incidentally, the aDNA under the designation "N" is computed to have split from its parents in China around 27,000 BC, from where a sub-branch migrated westwards and reached the Baikal region around 16,000 BC, where it split further. From there, expansions took place in two waves northwestwards. First at the beginning of the Holocene with N1a2b (B523) to the middle Don, then with the second "Atlantic" warming (Holm 2011, phase three) as N1a1a1a (CTS3103) and its descendants very rapidly into the Ob and north-eastern Europan region. (To be found in Rob Spencer's http://scaledinnovation.com/gg/snpTracker.html - good aDNA knowledge assumed). Whether these people actually brought the Uralic languages with them or only contributed to them cannot be proven with certainty. But I would like to assume so. BTW, this knowledge is missing in the brandnew, otherwise very informative Grünthal (2022) paperHJJHolm (talk) 06:38, 27 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Häkkinen does not cite this claim well at all, but this is indeed known. Mansi is directly attested from west of the Urals in the 18th century and partly even into the second half of the 19th century (see e.g. Gulya 1958, NyK 60 or Normanskaya 2015, UAS 19). For Hungarian we have no attestations, but I don't think there's any serious doubts about the connection of medieval reports of Magna Hungaria with Hungarians. For Khanty, similar medieval reports of "Ostyaks" exist … what to conclude from this is not as straightforward though, e.g. I am skeptical if medieval "Ostyaks" actually are Khantys and not, for example, northern Mansis (who have a material culture much closer to the Khanty than more southern Mansi groups did). -- Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 08:50, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Häkkinen 2023: On locating Proto-Uralic
A new thorough article, freely available in English, can be found in: https://journal.fi/fuf/article/view/120910 There the Uralic homeland is located in the Central Ural Region. Jaakko Häkkinen (talk) 06:29, 9 November 2023 (UTC)


 * "Bjørn Rasmus G. (2022)" - Here Bjørn is the family name, so either comma after it, or "Rasmus G. Bjørn". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jaakko Häkkinen (talk • contribs) 12:19, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

The trees
In the third paragraph of the Homeland hypotheses section it mentions two trees, Abies sibirica and Pinus cembra, the latter of which is native to the alps and carpathian mountains. There is already a clarification tag on it, but I still looked at the source (Paragraph 6 of page 27) https://www.sgr.fi/susa/92/hakkinen.pdf and found that in udmurt it translates to juniper (Where did that come from????). I've done all this with google translate and it spits out:

In all languages ​​except Udmurt, the word "juniper" means "senbra pine (Pinus cembra)". This transition is understandable because in the Udmurt language the Udmurt language does not belong to the area where juniper occurs: juniper is found only in Europe. In Europe, only on a narrow strip between the upper reaches of the Kama River and the Ural Mountains. and the semi-birch pine spread here from the east (Hajdú 1975: 39).

The article says that these trees are evidence of a siberian homeland, but I don't see how that is possible. I need somebody who speaks finnish to translate this for me: Sanan merkitys on kaikissa kielissä ’sembramänty (Pinus cembra)’ lukuun ottamatta udmurttia, jossa se on ’kataja’. Tämä siirtymä on ymmärrettävä, koska udmurttia ei puhuta sembramännyn levinneisyysalueella: sembramännyn levinneisyys ulottuu Euroopan puolelle vain kapean kaistaleen verran Kaman yläjuoksun ja Uralvuoriston välillä, ja tänne sembramänty on levinnyt idän suunnasta (Hajdú 1975: 39)

And if they cant make any sense of it, a=I think we should just delete this paragraph or something. please help :( Neonrareplasma (talk) 16:22, 29 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Let me try to correct that machine translation: In all languages the word means Pinus cembra, ​​except in Udmurt, where it means 'juniper'. This transition is understandable because the Udmurt language is not spoken in the area where pinus cembra occurs: In Europe, pinus cembra is only found on a narrow strip between the upper reaches of the Kama River and the Ural Mountains, and it spread there from the east. Most likely, by Pinus cembra he actually means Pinus sibirica which is sometimes considered as a subspecies of Pinus cembra and grows at the Ural mountains. (For a confirmation and more recent discussion, see https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-011619-030405 p. 358) P.S. Please correct the title. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 16:51, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Should we change the pinus cembra to pinus sibirica? or just leave the wrong tree in there? Neonrareplasma (talk) 19:18, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Changed the tree. ✅ Jähmefyysikko (talk) 20:41, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * This is a classic mis-binominalization, understandable since P. sibirica has for long been (and still is) in many sources treated also as a subspecies of P. cembra. They tend to have the same common name also in most languages other than English in which Uralicist literature appears (Zirbelkiefer, кедровая сосна, sembramänty, seedermänd, cirbolyafenyő). -- Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 14:15, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Neonrareplasma (talk) 20:35, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I confirm that the modern label for the tree mentioned in the article is Pinus sibirica. Until recently it was referred to as Pinus cembra subsp. sibirica.--Jaakko Häkkinen (talk) 23:34, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
 * So to be clear, pinus sibirica was mistakenly labeled as a subspecies of pinus cembra, so the authors just wrote pinus cembra instead of the sub species which caused all of the confusion? Neonrareplasma (talk) 14:09, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Considering the prehistory of the Uralic language family, there was at the time no reason to expect confusion threatening the interpretation. Everybody was supposed to understand that the tree in question was the Siberian cembra, not the Central European cembra, because only the first tree was anywhere near the assumed Uralic homeland. Of course it was impossible to predict that the biological classification of that tree would change in the future (although still "Siberian pine is treated as a variety or subspecies of the very similar Swiss pine (Pinus cembra) by some botanists." - Wikipedia), so unfortunately the current readers are a bit more prone to the confusion in question. Jaakko Häkkinen (talk) 07:40, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Structure
The outlay of this article needs significant re-work as it is currently disjumlbed. I propose launching directly into the current evidence (without pretentious title of "modern evidence") with a conclusion based on the wweight of evidence rather than one scholar pushing his (problematic) tenet Slovenski Volk (talk) Slovenski Volk (talk) 02:53, 14 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Could you explain what do you mean by this? Which view is problematic and on which basis? Number of writers in an article does not equal weight of evidence. Jaakko Häkkinen (talk) 23:38, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

There was a misunderstanding concerning my recent article, stemming from 14th November 2023, which I now corrected. - Earlier: ”On this basis the early phase of the Seima-Turbino Network in Southwestern Siberia could not yet be associated to the Uralic languages, but may instead be linked to a distant Pre-Proto-Uralic stage.” - Corrected: ”On this basis the early phase of the Seima-Turbino Network in Southwestern Siberia could not yet be associated to the Uralic languages, but perhaps the later stages in Europe could. In any case, according to him, the arrival of the Uralic language in the Central Ural Region would precede even the early stage of the Seima-Turbino Network.” The Seima-Turbino Network initiated in Southwestern Siberia ca. 2200 BCE, but according to the article, Late Proto-Uralic was in the Central Ural Region already in 2500 BCE. Therefore, according to this view, it is impossible that Pre-Proto-Uralic could be associated with the STN. Jaakko Häkkinen (talk) 03:48, 1 March 2024 (UTC)