Uralic homeland and genetics and their implications for PIE

[K33]

To take a break from the nonstop analysis of Eneolithic/BA Steppe DNA (or lack thereof) and theories, I thought I'd open this thread up to attack it from a different angle.

My understanding of the experts' consensus is that PIE likely had very early contacts with Uralic. Not only Indo-Iranian, but even PIE, given the apparent morphological influence in Anatolian. The next most significant language family in terms of contact/exchange w/PIE appears to be one or multiple of the Caucasian languages, although this is obscure and the Caucasian language families appear more difficult to reconstruct.

Therefore by giving more attention to the evidence around the proto-Uralic homeland, we might gain some insight into PIE and its formation. I am open to theories and evidence that may be illumating.

However, I will start by pointing out one thing I noticed myself from playing around w/Vahaduo and the G25. The following table has all the Uralic speakers I could round up, excepting only a) Hungarian (too diluted), and b) Nganassan.

The reason Nganassan were left out is I'm using them as a proxy for the other Uralic speakers. The nearly 100% East Eurasian Nganassan have a very unique form of East Asian ancestry that has not been adequately captured yet in the ancients. You can try Kolyma_Meso, Tyumen_HG, Boisman/DevilsGate, Baikal_N, etc-- you can't get even below 0.20 on the distance for Nganassan using these ancients. It's obvious they harbor ancestry from some HG group that must've been indigenous to the Upper Ural area, way off the trade routes, and we don't have the samples yet. Some of the Slab Grave Mongolians have up to 30% Nganassan-related ancestry. But none of the ancients have enough to come close to modeling Uralics: bottom line is the fits plummet without Nganassan.



Some striking observations:

- Sredny_Stog_o4 is strongly preferred over Yamnaya_RUS_Samara for steppe ancestry (3.8% aggregate avg fit vs 4.2%). For Udmurts, swapping Yamnaya for Sredny worsens the fit an entire point (from 3.26% to 4.33%)

- ALL Uralic speakers have Nganassan-related ancestry ("Uralic HG"?)

- ALL Samoyeds & Ugrics have substantial (>20%) Botai-related ancestry, while all Finno-Permics besides Udmurts have <7% and most have 0% (NOTE: Botai = 85% WSHG + 15% East Asian)

- Finno-Permic speakers all have 19-63% Baltic_EST_BA ancestry, while Samoyeds and Ugrics have none (again, Udmurts are "in between"). These Baltic_EST_BA samples have not gotten enough attention btw...they do seem to be a mix of some steppe group + HGs, but the steppe group isn't Sredny or Yamnaya and surprisingly the HG component isn't quite like the earlier Baltic HGs... will elaborate later.

- Mostly Finno-Permic speakers have the best fits, followed by Ugrics & Samoyedics -- as I stated earlier it's b/c we don't have the right "Uralic HG" proxy and have to use Nganassan instead. But Mari (Permic) have by far the worst fit. Why? I've tried everything (Iranian, Turkic, Mongolic, etc sources) and can't put a dent in that 10%

Anyway, below is what seems to be the dominant hypothesized phylogeny for Uralic (although certainly not the only proposal), I'm aware some of these names seem archaic (it seems Ostyak = Khanty, Vogul = Mansi) but its the only one I could find with some hypothetical split times:



What do you guys make of this? I have some theories but I'd like to hear some feedback first....

[Generalissimo]

You can improve many of the fits significantly by using RUS_Bolshoy_Oleni_Ostrov, which includes two of the earliest instances of the Uralic-specific N-L1026.

https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2019/...-speakers.html

[K33]

You can improve many of the fits significantly by using RUS_Bolshoy_Oleni_Ostrov, which include two of the earliest instances of the Uralic-specific N-L1026.

https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2019/...-speakers.html

Ahh yes, I was just gonna say though, the interesting thing about the earliest probable Uralic speakers on record, is that while the 1500 BC Bolshoy samples resemble the pattern shown by the Ugrics (high Botai ancestry), the later Levanlutha_IA resemble the Finno-Permic branch with their relative lack of Botai/WSHG ancestry.... but Estonian_IA has Botai-related and not much Ngaassan-related.

Hmm...



EDIT:

Adding the Bolshoy samples drops the aggregate fit from 3.8% to 3.4%, but once again its mostly the Finno-Permic speakers who get a lift. Mari still stuck around 9.1%... so there is definitely a "Uralic HG" ghost floating around... that's why I was trying to use more distal sources, to see if they could tell us something...

[K33]

Just saw this paper came out in December 2019, it argues that peculiarities in the structure of proto-Tocharian may come from early contact with pre-proto-Samoyedic:

https://brill.com/view/journals/ieul...ml?language=en

[anglesqueville]

Just for info, I am of course not authorized to open a debate about these difficult questions. You wrote: "Anyway, below is what seems to be the dominant hypothesized phylogeny for Uralic (although certainly not the only proposal)...". I do not know if this traditional tree is still really dominant (*), but in any case its criticism and revision by Häkkinen cannot be overlooked. They are mainly based on phonological considerations, as he explains very convincingly in his article " After the Protolanguage: Invisible convergence,false divergence and boundary shift". Unfortunately, his thesis, which lays the theoretical foundations for this revision, was not published in English (**). The key here is the status of the Samoyedic branch.
Attachment 37496

Another thing, I represented a few months ago the human groups associated with the main Uralic languages, using the t-sne algorithm. I kept this representation in my archives:
Attachment 37497

(*) I doubt it honestly, but I may be wrong. Only someone aware of the state of the art inside the Finnish university (among others, but mainly) could tell us which is the dominant model among the uralist community. I seem to remember that Kallio, at least, and perhaps Parpola, support now the view of an early branching of a Ugro-Samoyed sub-family.
(**) Available in Finnish on Academia https://www.academia.edu/3493833/Kan...valossa_2007a_

[hokkanto]

Anyway, below is what seems to be the dominant hypothesized phylogeny for Uralic (although certainly not the only proposal), I'm aware some of these names seem archaic (it seems Ostyak = Khanty, Vogul = Mansi) but its the only one I could find with some hypothetical split times:

https://i.imgur.com/GQTyel3.png?1

That chart is illogical. It constructs a Lappo-Finnic proto-language to around 100bc, but also implies that Lapp and Estonian languages share a more recent proto-language from around 1000ad. It's the equivalent of placing the Baltic languages within the Slavic branch, and then constructing a separate Balto-Slavic stage.

[Alain]

According to Eske Willerslev, have the Botai humans genetically disappeared from the map or are they Proto-uralics or have they been absorbed by Proto-uralics?

[Kristiina]

TMRCA of the Samoyed-specific N-P43 line, i.e. N-VL64, is 3200 ybp, which is more or less 1200 BC. Therefore, this could be understood to mean that Proto-Samoyed started developing at that time. Common Eastern Uralic at the root of the Ugric and Samoyedic branches at 1500 BC makes much more sense than having Samoyeds separating 4000 BC and speaking Proto-Uralic until 500 BC. If you insist that Samoyeds separated 4000 BC, it is very difficult to fit with the yDNA data as the whole P43 that is shared with Turkic and other Altaic speakers has a TMRCA of only 4800 ybp, i.e. 2800 BC which coincides with the start of the Bronze Age.

This tree by Jaakko Häkkinen is much better from the archaeological, linguistic and yDNA point-of-view:
J Häkkinen genealogical tree.GIF

[Kristiina]

To be deleted.

[Megalophias]

Adding the Bolshoy samples drops the aggregate fit from 3.8% to 3.4%, but once again its mostly the Finno-Permic speakers who get a lift. Mari still stuck around 9.1%... so there is definitely a "Uralic HG" ghost floating around... that's why I was trying to use more distal sources, to see if they could tell us something..

Probably won't help, but RUS_Krasnoyarsk_MLBA_o (only the outlier) and RUS_Mezhovskaya also seem to share some of that particular drift with BOO.