In 2017 I had a lengthy email debate with a hardcore defender of the archaic theory, and learned a great deal of how they justified their position in continuing to follow it. The following are some of the beliefs, some obviously ridiculous and defensive, and my responses to them.

Today there are thousands of languages, but observers – especially past linguists who have studied the large numbers of languages in North America at the time of European contact – have noted that similar languages sometimes differ slightly and are dialects to each other, and sometimes are so different that it is difficult for one to understand the other. This is the result of the fact that languages are not distinct tools, artifacts, with an independent existence, but that languages in reality exists in a fluid state, often part of a continuum of changing – converging in some ways, diverging in others, from their prior form or from nearby related languages. Humans in the natural state will generate a continuum based on a single language that changes dialectically in such a way that nearby dialects are close to each other, while dialects far away can be so different as to be regarded as related languages rather than dialects. In the natural state, therefore, there is a single language with dialects developed from patterns of contact – much contact causing dialects to resist change, little contact allowing the dialects to be more easily changed.

What we know as “languages” are the consequence of dramatic changes due to some external factors causing those dramatic changes in a continuum. The most common natural factors causing the dramatic changes, and even sharp discontinuities, were geographic barriers or boundaries. For example, originally there was a continuum of a single Finnic language going up the east Baltic coast, that varied dialectically in the fashion described above, but when it came to the Gulf of Finland, there was a sharp discontinuity caused by the Gulf of Finland geographic barrier. Of course to some extent, there was still some continuity with dialects going around the east end of the Gulf of Finland.  Another example is that we must regard the Ural Mountains as a barrier causing both sides to developing linguistically a little differently even if both languages developed from the same circumstances of contact between the Ur-Finnic and Ur-Samoyedic languages. I have also above stressed that for boat-oriented nomadic peoples, the boundaries of the inhabited water system form soft barriers to communication that caused the dialects in one language to be different from the dialects in another language.

But MOST languages today are not the result of natural barriers, but the result of creation of artificial nations, and the imposition of national languages on governed regions that originally contained the contiinuum of a single language. And that national language was based on the language of the strongest group.

That means when linguistics analyzes modern national languages, defined by arbitrary national boundaries, it is not dealing with language in a pure way, and as a result the results are somewhat contrived. Significantly when linguistics of Finnic languages jumps from Estonian to Livonian to Finnish to Karelian, and so on, it is not seeing the continuum, but leaping between languages that for one reason or another have been politically allowed to survive. All the dialects that originally existed between those surviving languages are treated as if they never existed.

But linguistics would be unable to analyze a continuum. Imagine that the modern Algonquian linguistic divisions created by water system boundaries, did not exist. There would be a single Algonquian language continuum, changing smoothly from tribe to tribe (we can allow minor steps of change from tribe to tribe), from the Atlantic to the middle of Canada.

This is very important, because comparative linguistics would not work on a continuum. Comparative linguistics has to deal with situations in which an original language breaks up into two strong dialects which then generates offsprings up to the modern day. Linguistics can only compare surviving descendants of the original dialectic divergence.

Linguistics can only compare surviving languages. It therefore cannot identify descendants of dialects when they did not produce descendant languages that reached the modern day. For example if there once existed Finnic languages say in the aboriginal peoples of Scandinavia, comparative linguistics cannot see it. Insofar as comparative linguistics today does not even acknowledge the possibility of extinct languages, it is unlikely to present a true picture of language evolution.

If we went back to the Ice Age, we would tend to find single languages spread practically endlessly in a continuum. Discontinuities could be caused by geographical barriers.. Common sense suggests that there would have been some natural barriers too in terms of how peoples following one way of life (horse hunters) occupied a different environment than peoples following another way of life (say, reindeer hunters) But there would be underlying continuity where an ancestral people diverged between those who went in two different directions.

Thus all languages are not of the same nature and we have to be restrained in what we conclude from them, while others may still reflect a natural continuum among aboriginal peoples.


This is the silliest claim by traditional “Uralic” linguists who want to find an original “Uralic” parent language near the Ural Mountains. This silly idea arises only when linguistics assumes language evolves from a group splitting off from a parent language and migrating away. Any theory that involves migrating away, requres that the parent language has a tight origin, If the language were widely distributed over an entire water system, then moving away would require travelling close to 1000km, to enter a new water system, since everyone still within a water system would continue to have contact with the original language. Obviously if we are dealing with highly nomadic peoples, the correct mechanism for linguistic divergence is for the original broad region of a single language, to subdivide dialectically for various reasons. Since the geography is constant, the dialectic divergence will be caused by natural continued divergence in the existing geography, or from the inhabitants changing their way of life so at to reduce contact throughout the original broad area. For example if members of a tribe no longfer travelled the entire river system, but reduced their nomadic ways to one branch of the river system, then dialectic divergence would occur within that original complete river system.

It is important to note that when the region of a single language with dialectic divergence (ie a continuum with some geographical influences developing dialectic divergence) is not static.  If we have nomadic peoples maintaining a single language, over time, the language of the whole region will evolve. What is constant is that there is uniformity over a broad area, and then that subsequent contraction of that broad area by further internal dialectic divergence, occurred to that broad language at that time.

In other words, if we accept that there was once an Ur-Finnic language that spread east as far as the Urals, we cannot claim that any modern Finnic language looks like the Ur-Finnic language. However, the larger the region of a single language, the more mobile the peple maintaining that language was,  the more inertia there would be in resisting change in one location or another.  Today we see the inertia in English, where the amount of use of English causes resistance to change. On the other hand, a local dialect in a community somewhere can quickly change, as it has little inertia.

Thus to conclude – traditonal “Uralic” linguists have no choice but to claim a tight origins near the Urals if they hold onto the idea of divergence arising from migrations. A century ago, the very idea of divergence by dialectic subdivision, was not acknowledged.


This idea is also necessary to defend the original “Uralic Language Family” idea, in the face of increasing knowledge from archeology about the expansion of humankind out of Ice Age Europe, a general west-to-east expansion. Since the traditional “Uralic” theory originally spoke about origins at the Urals around 4000 years ago, and an arrival at the Baltic by 2000 years ago, archeological discoveries forced the need to consider who were there at the Baltic BEFORE 2000 years ago. Scholars were confused, but generally assumed they were the peoples historians called “Finns” or “Fenni” – people related to the modern Saami (formerly “Lapps” and before that “Finns”). So the scholar had to assume that the modern Finnic peoples, notably Finns, were not descended from original people because they came from the east. But the Saami language is close enough to Finnish to be considered related to it.

So there existed a ridiculous situation. Theories that the arriving Finns from the east influenced the Saami language. To summarize a whole century of head-scratching, no evidence was found of an incoming people from the east, displacing or even influencing any native people. When archeology discovered that a “Comb-ceramic” material culture appeared in the entire east Baltic with pottery styles that appeared to have come from the upper Volga. This was enough for linguists to claim this was the time of the migration. They only needed to push back the arrival at the Baltic from 2000 years ago to 5,000 years ago! Archeologists (ie Richard Indreko) dismissed the logic, saying the influence from the upper Volga was purely a movement of a cultural feature, not an entire tribe.  There is evidence that long distance trade, probably fur trade, began at that time. This is confirmed by the spread of distribution of amber objects throughout the “Comb-ceramic” area and also in ancient Babylonian tombs,

There was a spread of an influence up the Volga, but you do not require an entire people to migrate to move something that more likely was carried by small groups of traders, or simply carried by families to gathering places.

It is also impossible to displace an original language with a new language, unless the new language is very strong, expecially carried by conquerors who kill off the indigenous peoples and force the new language on the indigenous people. Something like that occurred in the colonization of North America – hundreds of languages were wiped out. But always in history, there will be remote places where the original language endures. In the case of North America, languages have survived, especially in the north. In the British Isles, the Pictish language survived in the north until around the 10th century. It is possible to think of the Saami language as a remnant of languages that once dominated all of the Scandinavian Peninsula. Across Eurasia, original languages can be found that have not been replaced.

Even in these cases of replacement, the new language is backed by major powers. In order to argue an “Uralic” language completely replacing the original language (the Ur-Finnic) we need to find the language being spread by very powerful people bent on conquest and domination. History shows nothing.

Therefore if there is evidence in Finnic languages of origins that point back east as far as reindeer people, then it is more likely the original Ur-Finnic language was simply influenced by a language that was already Ur-Finnic at its foundations. Below we will propose that the Ur-Finnic peoples who reached the Urals, adopted aspects of the language of the reindeer people speaking Ur-Samoyedic, and the resulting language, which I am calling “Ur-Permic” then began to exert influences back east, first Ur-Permic on the original Ur-Finnic Volgic dialect, and then the slightly changed Volgic dialect in turn influencing the Ur-Finnic near the Baltic. The influences could indeed spread in step by step through boat peoples according to the major water systems. These influences would be superimposed onto the original and continuing internal dialectic divergence, resulting in the founding languages of the later development of the descendant languages that survived to the modern day.

However, a century ago, linguists wanted desparately to discover a linguistic family tree, and to use the migrations approach, and employ the new methodology, and there was no consideration of the simple spread  of linguistic influences in diminishing degrees with distance. ( Volgic  fur traders could have been the instruments of the spread of influences.).


One of the claims made by a traditional “Uralic” linguist was that a linguist cannot confuse similarity from convergence of two languages for similarity from divergence from a common parent.  The reason, was the claim, is that convergence is about borrowing and borrowed words can be detected from lack of cognates. Original words in a language, eventually develop words of related form and meaning, that are known as cognates. New words borrowed from other languages will not have existed in the language long enough to develop a history that leads to speakers developing cognates from them.

However, if a borrowed word is very popular, then it will become part of the language more quickly. But most of all, if the borrowing occurred a long time ago, then it would behave like any other original word, and its borrowed origin would not be detectable. As we see in these pages, the contact between the Ur-Finnic boat peoples and the Ur-Samoyedic reindeer people occurred as early as about 10,000 years ago. That is 5,000 year before the linguistic analysis using only the migration-divergence approach, suggests. What we have here – if you follow the story told by archeology and population genetics – is borrowing that took place so long ago that languages that developed from convergence between Ur-Finnic and Ur-Samoyedic will show similarities that can be erroneously interpreted as divergence from a “Uralic” original language, rather than an early convergence between Ur-Finnic and Ur-Samoyedic as early as 10,000 years ago. (Even some millenia later, there will still be enough time for the evidence of the original borrowing to be faded.)

It is therefore easily possible that traditional linguists mistook the convergence between two original languages to be a divergence from a hypothetical parent language.

Traditional historical comparative linguistics is now obsolete because most languages evolved by convergence – often going back to the end of the Ice Age – and yet comparative linguistic methodology is unable to detect or analyze convergence


Today, we can find many examples of the independence of language used, culture (way of life)  and genetics. For example we could have a black skinned African, speaking Finnish, and practicing, say, Japaneses culture.

But in the beginning – we have to realize – language originated as a tool that referred to the real world with symbols in order to communicate information. Reindeer people needed to have words for reindeer, their gender, the landscape, the spear, how to throw spears at reindeer, etc.  Thus in the beginning a language mirrored the way of life. Language and culture were intimately connected.

However when reindeer people adapted to using boats to hunt seals in the sea, the words for reindeer, and hunting reindeer on the tundra were useless. Since no language is created entirely anew, what happens is that the useless words are rarely used and forgotten. On the other hand a new array of words was necessary to reflect, the new way of life. New words were necessary for boat, the sea, seals, etc, and were invented, often from new uses for old words. Could a seal be referred to as a ‘water-reindeer’?  The harpoon used to hunt seals could be called ‘spear’.

Many words could be kept – words for sun, earth, land, sky, family relations like ‘mother’ ‘father’, ‘family group’. Thus if a people inherits a language but changes their way of life, there can be much continuity in the original language. A language is more likely to shift the meaning of existing words to suit new similar circumstances than invent a completely new word that never existed before.

Now, regardng genetics. We know from the behaviour of our closest relatives, the apes, that males forming groups are rulers and defenders of territory. New males grow up and are included in the society of males. There is a chief, a leader, among the males, and he is challenged by younger males who wish to take over. Humans come from the same place – males take charge, compete for leadership, and as a whole defend the tribe against predators or rival tribes. Indeed we can look beyond the apes to animals that encircle females and young against an advancing pack of wolves.

That means in the human past, males passed down the role of defender of the tribe generation after generation. Males never departed from their tribe They could lead the creation of a new tribe, but If a tribe existed, its males would never leave. They would fetch their wives from neighbouring tribes. Wives would be brought home to live beside their mothers. ‘

For this reason the population genetics DNA marker passed down from father to son, is revealing. It generally shows that the apparent migration of a male haplogroup, was in fact the migration of the tribe they belonged to. Haplogroups pertaining to females do not reveal the movement of tribes, because the males might obtain their wives from far away. Furthermore the daughter of the wife might then be again taken far away into another tribe. Hence DNA in female lineage only reveal a blurry sense of the range of a tribe over a long period. Female DNA is most useful for permanently settled peoples where males did not go very far to find their wives.

Thus genetics of the male lineage help us trace the migration of tribes from the apparent migrations of their haplogroup marker.  If we can now identify the cultural development of the tribe, we can also link the male haplogroup to culture. For example on these pages we can determine that the N-haplogroup was originally in males of reindeer people, therefore when this haplogroup appears in boat people, we can infer that there were times when tribes converted from reindeer people way of life to boat people way of life, and then from then on the N-haplogroup was spread via male offspring, through the boat people world, radiating from the original source location.

In terms of language, we use common sense. If reindeer people change to boat people, and interract with them, they will have to learn the language of the boat people to the degree of involvement. Language is not independent of circumstances involving way or life and genetics. Mixed marriages of course influence the use of a mixed languages, It raises the use of the mixed language which then exerts a stronger influence on unmixed dialects.

In general, all three parameters – language, culture, and genetics – although independent, interract with one another in the real world, and it is necessary to reconstruct the actual events before forming conclusions.
Nothing is achieved by pursing each of these parameters independently of the others since the nature of influences varies with total circumstances.


Since no language is developed from scratch, all language has some degree of continuity from a language that came before and formed the foundation for the new language. However, there could be truth that in advanced civilizations, the language of a dominant people can displace the language of a weaker people, and that such events can occur alongside historical events, where one conquering people is later conquered by another, For example, Britain was conquered by the Romans, and most of it converted to Latin, but then five centuries later, Britain was conquered by Germanic Saxons and Romans. But this kind of behaviour is possible only in warring, competing, powers in civilizations. In the case of the early languages of northwest Eurasia, there is no evidence of any such conquering people or anyone able to displace an original language. The fact that Finnic languages are filled with imagery of marshy lands and boat use, do not suggest the language came from another culture than the original Ur-Finnic of the orignal expansion of boat people. But it is possible for Finnic to be the consequence of being slightly changed by influences from the east and north that originated in the early Ur-Samoyedic.

When dealing with aboriginal peoples we cannot claim any full replacement of an original language by a new one, especially if there aren’t even any examples of remnants of the original language in remote places.
 



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 Colonization, 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.
 Pääbo, Andres  2002-2016  WEBSITE: The Origins and Expansions of the Ancient Boat-oriented Way of Life: Basic Introduction to the Theory of a Worldwide Expansion of Boat-peoples from Northern Europe
 , [http://www.paabo.ca/uirala/ui-ra-la.html]      This is currently a layman-type site, not scholarly, initially created for fun beginning 1998;; however the content contains much that is original new theory from more or less raw data.
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. This agrees with the other paleoclimatological and other facts. This association proves something that should be obvious from the archeological/climatological story – that the Samoyedic reindeer peoples were of Asian origins, not European.

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