<<<CONTENTS
1.
ADAPTING TO FLOODED NORTH
EUROPEAN
REINDEER PEOPLE BECOME BOAT PEOPLES WHO EXPAND EAST AND ENCOUNTER ASIAN REINDEER PEOPLE
20,000-10,000_BP
Synopsis:
At the end of the Ice Age, the world
climate was warming very rapidly -becoming as warm or warmer than today
by about 12,000 years ago, when the great glaciers were still very
large. This warming caused the northern lands to be flooded with
water, and turn former reindeer tundra into marshlands, lakes, rivers
and seas. Reindeer hunters had to give up their tradittional reindeer
hunting and adapt to the watery environment, including developing boats
just to
get around. Although humans were smart enough to
devise rafts to cross bodies of water we are not by nature
water-creatures; thus the evolution of a part of humanity into a life
using boats and getting around on water could not have occurred
spontaneously just anywhere. It had to have occurred in a place where
there was no other alternative; where survival depended on it, and the
pressure to change from being reindeer people on tundra to boat peoples
in
wetlands lasted many generations. Through
natural selection those groups who devised the best ways of dealing
with the watery environment were the ones who produced the largest
populations and flourished. When the new way of life was mature
and successful, it expanded rapidly as the population
of boat peoples grew in the warming climate.
Boat People Emerge from European
Reindeer People
FROM CLIMATIC,
GEOGRAPHIC AND ARCHEOLOGICAL
INFORMATION
The story begins at the
height of the Ice Age, when glaciers cover the entire north part of
Europe. In southern Europe there were people who lived in caves and
hunted bison, horses, reindeer and other large animals who lived in
plentiful grasslands or steppes, or towards the north permanently solid
tundra.
FIG 1
Map 1.
The Ice Sheet over the north of Europe.
Humans
who followed Reindeer, Bison,
Horses, Aurochs (wild cattle) and other migrating herds were
distributed according to the
migration patterns of these herds. Missing from the map is mammoths,
but mammoths became extinct in the course of the Ice Age retreat . As
the Ice Sheet withdrew and humans
began expanding northward, the first split was between the reindeer
hunters who occupied the tundra of the North European Plain, and the
descendants of the horse and bison hunters who were forced to adjust to
the
disappearance of grassy plains and plains herds.
This is an important distinction because language divergence occurs
when a people divides and two groups separate from each other as they
enter different environments.
But when the Ice Age came to an end, the climate
warmed, and the southern parts of Europe became increasingly forested.
Grasslands and steppes vanished, and brought an end to herds of many of
the
steppes animals. Bison and horse herds migrated into Eastern Europe
where the
climate remained dry and there was still open country with grassy
steppes.. On
the other hand reindeer were animals who lived on
the tundra plain north
of the tree line. There was always a northern limit to trees, and
beyond
that a tundra plain which could be inhabited by reindeer. Those humans
who sought to continue the way of life of the Ice Age, needed only to
shift north with the reindeer as they kept north of the tree
line. Except that in some locations the tundra was met by ice and seas
and further northward shifting of tundra reindeer and their hunters was
not possible
REINDEER PEOPLE
The story of the boat people begins with the reindeer hunters.
Archeologists have called the reindeer peoples of the later Ice Age,
just south of the glaciers, "Magdelenian Culture". By about 13,000
years ago, the broad region of northwest Europe contained the reindeer
peoples archeologists call the "Ahrensburg Culture" (Archeological
naming of cultures of prehistoric times does not mean there was much
change in language, and soft culture, so you must not imagine much
change in the reindeer peoples from one region to the next.)
Archeology has discovered that originally
tundra hunters pursued many tundra animals as well as reindeer,
but by about 13,000 years ago, in the north European Plain they were
sometimes 90% dependent on
reindeer, according to analysis of food refuse pit (midden) remains.
That means they became attached to and followed specific
tundra reindeer herds, and moved northward with them as the climate
warmed
and their tundra shifted north.
. The northward shift would have been so gradual the reindeer
people would not have been aware of it; (Perhaps if they had been
aware the lands to the south were getting warmer, they would not have
remained in the arctic conditions!)
The northward shift of the tundra and reindeer
peoples was occurring in Asia too. The "Magdelanian Culture" appears to
have reached far east at least to the beginning of Asia - all tundra
hunting peoples of the Ice Age were constantly roaming, following the
wandering animals. Since some animals roamed without design,
humans following them would also be migrating without design, it is
certainly possible that a tribe of mammoth hunters could migrate over
the tundra and steppes across the middle part of Eurasia. Tundra
reindeer too migrated long distances but they practiced annual
migrations north in summer and back south in winter. Each herd of
reindeer,
sometimes consisting of thousands of individuals, developed their own
summering and wintering locations and often travelled a couple thousand
kilometers north and south. It is thought reindeer survived whereas
other wholly
animals were in trouble because as the Ice Age ended there were
dramatic fluctuations in temperature in which wholly animals could not
deal with. Reindeer, however were able to adapt to the temperature with
their north-south migrations. In any event, reindeer survived in the
tundra, and it may be the reason humankind in the northern limits at
the end of the Ice Age, were basically reindeer hunters, and following
reindeer herds. (In fact, reindeer moved so fast that humans devised
ways to hunt them by intercepting them coming or going or at their
wintering locations - using the arctic cold to store large amounts of
meat when they came past.
In northern Europe, by around 13,000 years ago, to
the east of the "Ahrensburg Culture" of around Germany, there was what
archeologists call the
"Swiderian Culture" to its east around Poland. Suddenly the world
temperature was warming to what
it is today. In only about five centuries, scientists say, the reindeer
tundra across northern Europe was suddenly turning into marshlands. In
northwest and central continental Europe, the tundras could not shift
northward
because glaciers still covered Scandinavia and in the northeast
direction along the edge of the melting glacier, the northward
shifting of tundra was soon blocked by seas and glaciers in the
northeast European arctic. The reindeer herds
were doomed, and so was the
reindeer-hunting way of life. Their last refuge was in northern
Britain, and some mountains of southern Norway.
The following
map, developed from a nice base map from source cited under the map,
shows the situation about 13,000 years ago. Clearly if the tundra was
found only in the pink regions, and in the next millenium, if there was
a rapid warming to the termperature of today, the remaining reindeer
tundra (where the climate was cold enought) would be found only north
into Britain, and in the northest direction to the east of the
glacier. That obviously meant that the Ahrensburg Culture was doomed,
while the Swiderian Culture could still find tundra and reindeer
for perhaps a millenium towards the northeast.
As we mentioned, and shown in Figure 2, in the northeast
direction the tundra was
eventually terminated by all the glacial meltwater covering the
regions that are tundra today. We have to bear in mind that most of the
glacier was still there, even though the temperature was as warm as
today
- a situation similar to Greenland today relative to climate
change. Glaciers are melting and water is gushing out of them.
FIG 2
The
pink represents regions that were probably tundra or steppes and red
arrows indicate movements northward of reindeer hunters following
reindeer herds. The map represents 13,000 years ago, which was just
before a period of rapid warming. The above map is unusual as the
cartographer, probably using modern elevations, reconstructed
where the glacial meltwater would have been. While reindeer can go over
ice in winter, reindeer also need to be able to paw through snow for
lichens, and therefore reindeer would not survive in the glacial sea
areas. Note how as the climate warmed in following millenia, only
reindeer headed in the direction of the Tamir Peninsula and northeast
Siberia were NOT blocked by glaciers or glacial meltwater, which
explains why the largest population of reindeer herds today are found
in the Tamir Peninsula.
The following
map (Figure 3) from an archeological article (from Kozlowski J, and
Bandi H-G 1984) covers archeological sites dated to between 40,000 to
around 12,000 years ago. The solid line on the left is the original
edge of glacier ice, later becoming glacial lakes. I have added further
information with colour. The light blue represents the area covered by
glaciers. This map basically
shows how tundra hunters covered a vast area of tundra in their nomadic
life. Presumably, as the climate warmed the reindeer culture (perhaps
basically ancestral to the Swiderian Culture) took people further
north. The other sites show migrations up the Ural Mountains from the
Asian side. Archeological digs show that the main large animals
used were reindeer. While they hunted grouse and hairs, the bones of
large animals was 90% reindeer.
FIG 3
The
above map from an article by archeologists Kozlowski J, and
Bandi H-G 1984, is the one in black beneath the colour. The blue colour
represents the original glacier, as shown in Figure 2, but this map
fails to show the glacial lakes and seas of Figure 2. Note the solid
lines suggest migrations originally prehaps following mammoths. The
dashed arrows represent hunters who went north through the Ural
Mountains. Archeology has found they originated from Siberia to the
east. They were probably from the same Asian reindeer hunters who also
made their way north to northeast Siberia. The archeogical sites cover
the entire period up to 12,000 years ago, and not just 30.000 years ago.
Common sense suggests that if the climate became as
warm as today, and there was glacier and glacial seas north of the
northern Urals location, then reindeer and reindeer peoples could only
find refuge in the mountains of the northern Ural Mountains. While the
map shows older sites towards the south, diggings at the site marked 6
on the map, at what is known as the Medveja Cave, reveal the cave was
used over many millenia, and that the most recent level of remains was
close to around 12,000-11,000 or so, which still showed large animal
remains to be mostly reindeer, and therefore there were reindeer
people in the higher mountains of the northern Urals.
The significance of these Asian reindeer people is
that in the warming climate, many changed their way of life to the boat
peoples, and in doing so introduced genetically the Y-DNA N-haplogroup
marker into the boat peoples in the subsequent millenia.
We should not forget that reindeer-oriented peoples
still inhabited the northern Urals, whereas back towards the west, the
Ahrensburg and Swiderian cultures disappeared by changing into the
"Maglemose" and "Kunda" boat people that expanded east towards the
Urals. When the boat
people spread eastward, they would encounter these Urals reindeer
peoples and that it would leave an impact on language and genetics.
THE BOAT-USERS IN A FLOODED LANDSCAPE
EMERGE IN THE SWOLLEN BALTIC
(the following is excerpted from two pages of
the famous book by Grahame Clark.
...reindeer hunters of western
and northern Europe during the period between ten and fifteen thousand
years ago provide a well-documented example [of narrowing down of
animals pusued] Analysis of the larger game animals represented in the
food-refuse of the Late-Magdalenians who sheltered in the south German
cave of Petersfels for example, shows that they obtained four-fifth of
their meat from reindeer. And even greater concentration can be seen on
the summer hunting stations of the Hamburgian and Ahrensburgians sited
on the margins of glacial tunnel-valleys in Schleswig-Holstein. In that
case over 99 percent of the larger game animals were of a single
species. The evidence suggests that other animals were the victims of
chance encounters and that the only serious quarry was the
reindeer...By attaching themselves to a herd of reindeer a group of
hunters would not only possess themselves if a walking larder,
comparable up to a point with a domesticated herd, but also a source of
many of the most important raw materials they needed, skins for
clothing and tents, antler and sinew for hunting gear........quite
suddenly, in the course of a few generations the ecological setting
changed: as Late-glacial gave way to Post-glacial climate and
glaciers entered on their final retreat, forests encroached rapidly on
the open grazing grounds formerly occupied by reindeer.....the hunting
people of the North European Plain reacted in part by reverting
to a mixed hunting economy... but in part by developing special skills
in fishing and winning food from the seashore. [Clark, World
Prehistory, pp73-74]
The science is clear that a major change occurred in the
North European plain over a rapid period, in effect changing the
reindeer hunters of the northwestern Europe into mixed-hunting, seafood
consumers, who moved about in boats. Archeology identified these
peoples who expanded rapidly as far as the Urals as the “Maglemose”
culture.
...The Neothermal inhabitants of this
region [North European Plain most severely affected by environmental
change at the close of the Pleistocene] had to adapt to a landscape
transformed from park-like tundra into closed forest........People
could no longer support themselves hunting a single
species....Information is particularly rich in this respect of the
Maglemosians who take their name from the big bog (magle mose) at
Mullerup where their culture was first recognized. Their hunting
grounds on the North European Plain extended in the west to eastern
England and Flanders with outliers as far as Ulsterm and were centered
on the marshy region now covered by the North Sea, and North German
Plain, and the west Baltic area including Denmark and south Sweden; in
the east they occupied parts of northern Russia as far as the Ural
mountains. Over the whole of this territory they were fond of camping
along river banks and lake shores on the margin of the encompassing
forest, a favoured resort of certain game animals, including notably
elk (=moose), as well as of wild-fowl, water-plants and fish. [G.
Clark, World Prehistory, p 79]
THE CONVERSION OF "SWIDERIAN" REINDEER
CULTURE TO "KUNDA" BOAT PEOPLE
The reindeer hunters further west were able to
continue their reindeer hunting activity a little longer than the
Maglemosians, because reindeer found tundra refuge in Britain, which
was connected to the mainland, which was now becoming free of ice.
Southern Norway was ice-free too, and science has discovered that some
reindeer endured in the mountains of southern Norway. They could not
have continued further north, however. Reindeer need arctic tundra or
alpine vegetation, notably lichens, especially reindeer moss.
Reindeer in what is now Poland, were not blocked by the glaciers,
and by common sense alone, we can determine that some degrees of the
original reindeer hunting life shifted northeast along the east edge of
the glaciers, as already described above. Archeology has called
this reindeer hunting culture
in Poland, the "Swiderian Culture",
and also confirmed that the Swiderian Culture shifted north and because
of it, converted to boat using culture more gradually - according to
the slower rate of loss of reindeer habitat.
Reindeer species can
live in open arctic conifer forests, so the tundra reindeer hunters,
would have seen a breakup of the large tundra herds and small herds
taking up residence in the emerging arctic forests. The animal known in
North America as the moose and in Britain as 'elk', was found in a
similar environment, but was also adapted to live in wetlands - being
able to even submerge and feed on aquatic plants. Thus, the Swiderian
Culture was able to slowly adapt to hunting moose in wetlands, as they
also developed boat use. Because of this natural progression from
reindeer hunting to moose hunting to hunting aquatic animals,
archeologists have found a
continuity in artifacts and have called these hybrids that
developed as far north as Finland, as "Post-Swiderian"
Culture. This continuity may also mean a continuity in language. This
is supported by the fact that there were no other peoples in the area
to influence linguistic change.. The accepted name for most of it
is the "Kunda Culture" named
after the site where it was first identified at Kunda, Estonia.
The Kunda Culture presented all the evidence of the use of
dugouts -
the making of it no doubt borrowed from the Maglemosians where the
Maglemosians interfaced with the Swiderians at the southeast Baltic.
(Evidence of dugouts includes the stone adze. According to the way the
Hanti Ob-Ugrians made dugouts, fire was used to burn the wood away, and
the adze was only used to chop away the coals in the direction one
wanted the burning to continue, since leaving the coals cut off oxygen
and created a barrier to further burning.)The figure below shows the
adze,
FIG 4
(right) Kunda Culture Harpoon and Adze
In addition the artifacts included large harpoon heads that were
no doubt used for hunting seals or small whales. This means these
people must have made large dugouts to handle the waves of the open
Baltic.. It is interesting to note that the large seagoing dugout has
been archeologically identified in the east Baltic indirectly from
finds of remains in bogs. It was generally large enought to seat
two men side by side on three benches, each one with an oar, meaning
six men and oars. There was always an additional oar, which was
certainly used by the helmsman, to steer, since the rowers were not
able to see where they were going.
Thus, while we may owe the origins of the small
dugouts of the marshlands of the marshes of southern Scandinavia and
south Baltic to the Maglemose Culture, we owe the origins of seagoing
vessels to the Kunda adaptation to hunting in the open sea.
THE EXPANSION OF BOAT PEOPLES BY ABOUT
10,500 YEARS AGO
The following map shows the lands and glaciers as
they would have been about 2-3 millenia later. The blue shows the
expansion of the boat people. The orange represents higher ground, but
no longer tundra. The "R-H REMNANTS" in there higher ground locations
would have adapted to hunting small herds of woodland reindeer or elk
or moose (The animals called "moose" and "elk" in North America are
called "elk" and "red deer" in British English). The red/pink areas in
arctic Siberia, would be the only remaining locations of tundra. (The
situation in Figure 5 is climatically same as today, but today all the
glaciers in Fig 5 and the glacial meltwater lakes/seas are gone.)
FIG 5
The map shows with arrows, the expansion
of the
:"Maglemose" and "Kunda" culture boat peoples, but we should not
imagine they were very different in language and soft culture
(religion, clothing, customs) because boat peoples covered large areas
and did not have much opportunity to change soft culture more than
dialectic variations.
MEANWHILE BACK AT THE URALS
Referring back to the archeological discoveries in the Urals, it
is clear that humans visited the Urals as the climate warmed, and found
reindeer taking refuge in the mountains. (Perhaps these people were
deliberately assisting the reindeer by guiding them up mountains in
summer).
Regardless of who were in the Urals throughout the
climate warming period, when the boat people reached the Urals they
found hunters from Asian origins in the Ural Mountains (Figure 3).
In recent decades population genetics has added more
information we can use to reconstruct the past. Our understanding of
reindeer people who migrated /shifted north on the Asian side of the
Ural Mountains, has been amplified by population genetics documentation
of the Y-DNA N-haplogroup in men.
The general category of N-haplogroup, is considered
to have originated in China in the Ice Age, around 20,000 years ago.
Because its highest frequency today is found in arctic peoples with
traditions of association with reindeer - For example 98% of
Samoyedic men in the Tamir Penisula have an N-haplogroup. This suggests
- see Figure 5 - they are descended from reindeer peoples who followed
reindeer shifting north through the Central European Plateau.
Another variant of the N-haplogroup, originally
called N3, and today called N1c1, appears to also have migrated north
with reindeer by two branches - one northeast into Siberia and the othr
northwest up the Urals and then west along the European arctic. This
has been determined by an in-depth investigation by Rootsi et al.
The easterly branch of the N1c1-haplogroup
marker went through the Central Siberian Plateau, and then - probably
from being repelled by the reindeer peoples already in the Tamir
Peninsula - turned east into the tundra there. This can be inferred
from the fact that men of the Yakut peoples possess N1c1 in high
frequency.
The westerly branch of N1c1 is found in men in
northeast Europe and in northern Finland where one finds the Saami
reindeer culture. This concentration could not have come from the east,
from the Yakuts, because a large glacial lake existed between the Ural
Mountains and the Central Siberian Plateau, where reindeer cannot
survive. (Reindeer are lichen eaters, particularly "reindeer
moss")
That means the Asian reindeer peoples with the
N1c1 , divided in two in the region south of the Ob River water basin,
perhaps in the Altai Mountains which crossed over into Mongolia. It is
worth noting that reindeer peoples have endured in the mountains of
northern Mongolia and southern Siberia, but the people have to live in
the mountains and drive tame reindeer up and down the mountain. They
also do not eat the reindeer for food, but use them for milk and
transportation. All the signs exist in these remnant peoples of the
climate warming were so concerned with the extinction of their
reindeer, they stopped eating it. But the branch of such people who
managed to travel west to the Urals and north, encountered the boat
people with a successful culture adapted to the new warm, wet, climate,
and their answer was to abandon their reindeer dependence, and copy the
existing successful way of life. (Of course those who managed to
proceed north early, were able to continue their reindeer-oriented way
of life, in order to continue it when the glaciers were gone.
REINDEER PEOPLE MANAGE TO
MIGRATE WEST
TO NORTHERN FINLAND
In any event, poplation genetics concerning the N1c1
haplogroup has determined that it went north through the Urals,
starting around 12,000 years ago. Therefore the N1c1 haplogroup
and its mutations, simply could not go anywhere else than north through
the Urals to a refuge in the polar Urals until the glaciers and the
meltwater had subsided. Which means, reindeer peoples could not begin a
migration along the arctic tundra in the direction of northern Finland,
until perhaps 8,000 years ago. This was followed by diffusion of the
N1c1 haplogroup southward. Once again, we bear in mind that the
Asian reindeer people could not go where there were no reindeer, as
long as they remained reindeer people. In order for diffusion of the
N1c1 haplogroup to occur anywhere either away from the Urals, or from
the arctic in the southerly direction, the N1c1 haplogroup men would
have to abandon reindeer and adopt the way of life of the boat peoples,
the descendants of the "Kunda" culture (Which means scholars should be
careful not to arbitrarily link way of life, genetics, and language
together.. Language and genetics can change independently and any
arguments that uses one to explain another, need to provide thorough
arguments and evidence, and not arbitrarily used to advance a theory.
The following Figure 6 shows on a typical plotting
of findings of percentages of N1c1 haplogroup onto a section of a map
of northwestern Eurasia. If the N-halogroup originated with reindeer
people, that means everywhere that the N1c1 haplogroup moved south
outside reindeer tundra regions, the people change to the way of life
to the boat peoples. Once in the boat peoples, N1c1 then spread by
diffusion (the accumulated result of individual behaviour). (Those
population geneticists who want to picture the movement of mutations as
the result of migrations, are generally ignorant of how humans usually
behave - migrations are rare, and usually the result of, refugee
flights from war or sudden catastrophes.
FIG 6
This
diagram of the path of the west branch of the migration of Y-DNA
N-haplogroup
known as N1c1 The_N1c1-haplogroup migration is shown on a section of a
typical plotting of haplogroup frequency relative to geography. Th
numbers represent percentage of men with the N1c1 haplogroup markers.
Then lines are drawn around ranges of percentage, where higher
percentage areas suggests movement into these areas and remaining
there, in prehistory. Note a around 40-50 % approximately in the
Pechora River basin. This suggests that many of the N1c1 reindeer
people who migrated north through the Urals, abandoned their reindeer
hunting way of life and moved into the river basin - meaning they
became boat people. The gap between there and the Finland area means
that the remaining reindeer people did not stop, but continued into
northern Finland. Since Finns south of the Saami were not reindeer
peoples, here too there was a conversion to a way of life away from
reindeer, and a diffusion of the N1c1 haplogroup southward from their
joining the boat peoples. Further southward diffusion would similarly
have occurred by diffusion, from it having entered the "Kunda"
boat people populations. The jumble of numbers are indicative of the
mobility of boat peoples especially as traders. Today geneticists have
broken down N-haplogroups into more refined mutations, but those
mutations simply show further diffusion - men who have the
haplogroup speading into less inhabited or more civilized areas.
BOAT PEOPLES AND
ASIAN REINDEER PEOPLES MEET AT THE URALS
After the boat peoples of the "Maglemose" and
"Kunda" material culture origins were formed, their population in
general grew because they discovered a new powerful way of life
(for example they could accecss animals of marshlands, formerly
inaccessible, and move through the environment five times faster than
walking) Along with the general warming of the world climate, the boat
peoples spread into all available waterways. As Figure 5 shows, the
expansions in the watery environment in the easterly direction was
easy. The northern glacial waters as well as the Volga and Kama would
take them to the Ural Mountains. Proof that boat peoples were at the
Urals is proven by the finding of the "Shigir" statue. Because it was
found in the remains of a bog, and carved with a beaver tooth tool, the
wooden statue could only have been made by boat peoples.
Scientists have now dated this find to 11,000 years ago, which is
consistent with all information regarding timing of climate warming,
and the evidence of the Asian reindeer hunters in the Ural
Mountains. The "Shigir"statue is very significant for the theory of
boat peoples reaching the Urals by about 11,000 years ago, since
archeologists are more likely to explore caves in mountains than to dig
around in ancient bogs.
FIG 7
Top part of a very long carved pole, found in the central Ural Mountain
regions, and dated to 11,000 years ago. This statue could only
have been made by peoples who lived in marshlands and therefore used
boats (as opposed to being pedestiran hunters in the mountains)
According to experts, the 5.3 meter statue was carved from a larch tree
using a tool made of beaver teeth. It was set into a stone base
and fell over into a peat bog, where the wood was preserved until
found. The bog location and beaver teeth suggest it was created by boat
peoples.
The Shigir statue was found towards the east
side of the Urals at a location where mountains are low and crossing
via rivers is not too difficult. This suggests that boat peoples were
crossing the Urals, and entering the waters of the Ob River basin as
well. Thus we would be correct to suggest that the expansion of the
boat peoples continued into the Ob River basin, and that we can include
the Ob River into the initial expansion story.
LANGUAGE AND GENETICS
The significance of the meeting between the boat
peoples, and the Asian-origin reindeer peoples in the Urals, is that it
explains the Finno-Ugric language speaking cultures today. In
terms of the genetics, the N1c1 frequencies tell the story of
a) reindeer people moving north through the Urals,
b) the climate warming causing many to abandon
reindeer hunting and join the way of life of the boat-oriented
hunter-gatherer and in effect bringing the N1c1 haplogroup into the
realm of the boat people, and it diffuses from individual mating
actions, like putting drop of red dye in blue water causes a
diffusion of the red outward into the blue (purple developing and
spreading), Once the N1c1 is in the boat peoples realm, then it
diffuses through the contacts between tribes within the boat peoples
realm.
c)contact and involvement between the boat peoples
closest to the Asian reindeer people, begins the development of
improved means of communication. Contact between two languages that are
different tends to take the form of each side learning the most
frequently used words and phrases of the other. This makes the
languages also more similar to each other. This convergence would then
make the languages with most contact most similar, and those with less
contact less similar. Thus the language furthest away from the Urals,
Finnic, would be least changed by the contacts of boat peoples at
the Urals, while the language closest to the Urals, today called
Permic, would be closest to the language of the Urals reindeer people.
Once we cross into the Ob River, we have to deal with the contacts
between Ob River boat peoples and the Samoyedic peoples close to
the mouth of the Ob or on the edges of the Ob River Basin too, which
means influence from another dialect of Asian reindeer people than that
which was in the Urals.
The result is depicted on the map below.
FIG 8
FROM THE LANGUAGE AND GENETICS POINT OF VIEW
The UIRALA theme is about the
expansion of boat peoples, but both linguistics and population genetics
sees that the original European boat peoples were affected by both the
language and genes brought west via reindeer people from Asian origins,
or these reindeer people converting to the boat people way of life, and
impacting the original boat peoples at least genetically.
CONCLUSIONS
This section has covered the rise of the north
European boat peoples from European reindeer hunters, and briefly
introduced their expansion east to the Urals and contact with Asian
reindeer peoples in the Urals, and expansion into the arctic and the
beginnings of a circumpolar expansion. The next section
will deal in more detail with the expansion east to the Urals,
and the interractions with the Urals reindeer peoples briefly
introduced above. After that we will deal with the expansion of
the boat peoples into the arctic and further expansion from there.
A
detailed scholarly paper that goes into detail about a NEW
interpretation of the evolution of the languages of northwest Eurasia,
the region where
the boat peoples expanded. This os for scholars with a greater
interest in the
development of the indigenous languages, rather than reconstructing the
expansion of boat peoples
SOURCES
AND REFERENCES
Since this webpage has been
constantly updated - edited and changed - many sources and references
are
acknowledged where possible in the text or beside the picture. If a
statement is made or picture shown, without a source, that means the
image is either fully original by the author (A.Paabo)or significantly
modified artistically. Significanly mentioned references in the article
above include:
Clark, G, 1967 World Prehistory,
Cambridge A celebrated text that
summarized the accumulated archeological discoveries up to that time.
Since then the ideas have simply been refined.
Jaanits, L. et al, 1982, Eesti
Esiakalugu, Eesti Raamat, Tallinn In
Estonian, the product of Estonian archeological work during the Soviet
period, where the authors were able to access the work of other
archeology within the Soviet Union, not as accessible in the west.
Kozlowski J, and Bandi H-G 1984 The
Paleohistory of Circumpolar
Arctic Colonizationm, Arctic 37 (4): 359-372 Article in English,
where
the investigation of the northeast Europe and the Urals was only one
section. I chose to use it for reference because of this focus, and
because it was a summary.
Rootsi,S., et al. 2006, A
counterclockwise northern route of the
Y-chromosome haplogroup N from Southeast Asia towards Europe”
European
Journal of Human Genetics 15 (2): 204-11 Comment: This is regarded as
the authorative study suggesting the N1c1 haplogroup migrated up the
Ural Mountains and then continued west along the arctic coast of
northeast Europe to the northern Finland area, and then diffused into
the Finno-Ugric speakers from the locations of the reindeer peoples.
<<<CONTENTS
author: A.Paabo, Box 478,
Apsley, Ont., Canada
2017 (c) A. Pääbo.
