Mankind
Quarterly, Vol. 44, Nos. 3 & 4 (Spring-Summer 2004)
pp. 313-328
Thoughts on the
Chain-Like Homeland of the Uralic People.
János Pusztay
The author tackles the thorny question
of the unity and origins of the Uralic languages,
and suggests that thousands of years before any proto-Fenno-Ugric
or proto-Ob-Ugrian or proto-Samoyed may have developed
there was a loose culture area extending across northern
Eurasia from Fenno-Scandinavia to the Pacific, containing
a wide variety of speech forms. To the east these
evolved or amalgamated into a Paleo-Siberian group
of languages and to the west into the Fenno-Ugric
languages. However, some of the peoples in the center
may have become separated from the Paleo-Siberian
people to the east by he intrusion of new peoples
into the area of the Yenesei from the southeast. As
a result the more western Paleo-Siberians would have
been brought into closer contact with the Fenno-Ugric
speakers to their west, and the resultant linguistic
influences may have resulted in the Ob-Ugrian and
Samoyed languages. Thus he sees no common homeland
for all speakers of Uralic languages, but rather a
chain-like cultural region. To support this view he
draws primarily on linguistic evidence, but also shows
how this theory would fit the available archeological
evidence for cultural evolution and migration. Although
he does discuss physical anthropology, his theory
would serve to explain the biological differences
between the Caucasoid Finns and Estonians of today,
who speak Uralic languages, and the more Mongoloid
Samoyed and Ugrians whose languages are also classified
as Uralic.
