Locating Proto-Uralic

[Jaska]

Since the beginning, the Uralic homeland has been located on either side of the Urals: in the Volga-Ural Region in Europe or in Southwestern Siberia. Here I give some relevant articles from the recent decades, so that readers may acquaint themselves with arguments most often applied on the topic.
[!!!  In Google Translator one can translate PDF's smaller than 10 Mb, although translations from Finnish to English are not of very high quality (although much better than to the other way).]

Kallio, Petri 2006: Suomen kantakielten absoluuttista kronologiaa
https://journal.fi/virittaja/article/view/40454/9880

Janhunen, Juha 2009: Proto-Uralic—what, where, and when?
https://www.sgr.fi/sust/sust258/sust258_janhunen.pdf

Häkkinen, Jaakko 2009: Kantauralin ajoitus ja paikannus: perustelut puntarissa
https://www.sgr.fi/susa/92/hakkinen.pdf

Parpola, Asko 2012: Formation of the Indo-European and Uralic (Finno-Ugric) language families
in the light of archaeology: Revised and integrated ‘total’ correlations
https://www.sgr.fi/sust/sust266/sust266_parpola.pdf

Nichols, Johanna 2021: The Origin and Dispersal of Uralic: Distributional Typological View
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10...619-030405

Saarikivi, Janne 2022: The divergence of Proto-Uralic and its offspring. A descendent reconstruction
https://www.academia.edu/61676595/The_di...nstruction

Grünthal et al. 2022: Drastic demographic events triggered the Uralic spread
https://benjamins.com/catalog/getpdf?webfile=a315474857

Bjørn, Rasmus 2022: Indo-European loanwords and exchange in Bronze Age Central and East Asia
https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/...e-zone.pdf

Soon my own article on the topic will be published:
Häkkinen, Jaakko 2023: On locating Proto-Uralic. – Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen 68.

Most popular archaeological correlation has recently been the Seima-Turbino Network. Most popular genetic counterparts have been certain subclades of paternal haplogroup N and certain Siberian autosomal component (Nganasan-like ~ Kra001-like ~ Yakutia_LNBA-like). Here are the most relevant articles:

Ilumäe, Anne-Mai et al. 2016: Human Y Chromosome Haplogroup N: A Non-trivial Time-Resolved Phylogeography that Cuts across Language Families
https://www.cell.com/ajhg/pdfExtended/S0...16)30160-4

Tambets, Kristiina et al. 2018: Genes reveal traces of common recent demographic history for most of the Uralic-speaking populations
https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/...1522-1.pdf

Lamnidis, Thiseas et al. 2018: Ancient Fennoscandian genomes reveal origin and spread of Siberian ancestry in Europe
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07483-5.pdf

Saag, Lehti et al. 2019: The Arrival of Siberian Ancestry Connecting the Eastern Baltic to Uralic Speakers further East
https://www.cell.com/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)30424-5

Post, Helen et al. 2019: Y-chromosomal connection between Hungarians and geographically distant populations of the Ural Mountain region and West Siberia
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44272-6.pdf

Maróti, Zoltán et al. 2022: The genetic origin of Huns, Avars, and conquering Hungarians
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar...2222007321

Childebayeva, Ainash et al. 2023: Bronze Age Northern Eurasian Genetics in the Context of Development of Metallurgy and Siberian Ancestry
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/...1.560195v1

Zeng, Tian Chen et al. 2023: Postglacial genomes from foragers across Northern Eurasia reveal prehistoric mobility associated with the spread of the Uralic and Yeniseian languages
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/...1.560332v1

[VladMC]

+ Riho Grünthal & Sampsa Holopainen, 2023

Early Metal Age in the Middle Volga and the diversification of Uralic languages
http://www.sarks.fi/masf/masf_11/MASF11_...painen.pdf

[Jaska]

Häkkinen, Jaakko 2023:
On locating Proto-Uralic
https://journal.fi/fuf/article/view/120910



My new article concerning location of Proto-Uralic (in English) has just been published in Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen 68. Some arguments applied earlier are anachronistic and thus irrelevant for locating Late Proto-Uralic, while some other arguments are not valid. In addition to location, I give also dating for Late Proto-Uralic and more resolute model for disintegration of the proto-language.

I argue that Late Proto-Uralic – the last shared ancestor of all extant Uralic languages – was spoken between Europe and Siberia in the Central Ural Region. The most compelling evidence consists of tree names with regular phonology and semantics, as well as of early Indo-Iranian loanword layers. The Sintashta Culture, which is generally considered the homeland of Late Proto-Indo-Iranian, is located to the south from there, and the Volga-Ural Region, where the earlier Indo-Iranian stages developed, is located to the southwest from there.

Late Proto-Uralic began to disintegrate slightly before the Indo-Iranian contacts, apparently soon after 2500 BCE. Disintegration process can be followed first from the lack or presence of Indo-Iranian loanwords, then from different sound substitutions in Uralic (macro-)branches, and finally from (macro-)branch-specific sound changes.

Even though Samoyedic early on formed a center of its own within the Uralic speech community, it was still for a long time spoken close to other Uralic pre-dialects and even participated in the East Uralic sound changes shared by Hungarian, Mansi, and Khanty. Only after that, close to mid-second millennium BCE, Samoyedic could have moved to Southern Siberia, far from all the other Uralic branches.

Consequently, the early stages of the Seima-Turbino Network in Southwest Siberia between 2200–2000 BCE cannot be connected to Uralic languages. However, Uralic languages could have participated in the expansion of the Seima-Turbino Network to Europe from 2000 BCE onward. At the early second millennium BC, the Central Ural Passage was controlled by the Koptyaki Culture. Based on distribution maps, this is exactly the route through which the Seima-Turbino bronze artefacts spread to Europe: Irtysh–Tobol–Iset–Chusovaya–Kama–Volga. (During the actual Late Proto-Uralic, the Ayat Culture prevailed in the Central Ural Region.)

The first Uralic expansion did not reach beyond the Volga-Oka Region, where we find the great Seima center. West Uralic center could be located there, and the Permic center in the other great center in Turbino along Middle Kama. Expansions of Hungarian, Mansi, and Khanty can be derived from the Central Ural Region, and only Samoyedic moved farther to the east. Later phases of Uralic expansion have been considered in the works of Asko Parpola and Valter Lang, with whom my model is compatible.

[Mythbuster General]

Häkkinen, Jaakko 2023:
On locating Proto-Uralic
https://journal.fi/fuf/article/view/120910



My new article concerning location of Proto-Uralic (in English) has just been published in Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen 68. Some arguments applied earlier are anachronistic and thus irrelevant for locating Late Proto-Uralic, while some other arguments are not valid. In addition to location, I give also dating for Late Proto-Uralic and more resolute model for disintegration of the proto-language.

I argue that Late Proto-Uralic – the last shared ancestor of all extant Uralic languages – was spoken between Europe and Siberia in the Central Ural Region. The most compelling evidence consists of tree names with regular phonology and semantics, as well as of early Indo-Iranian loanword layers. The Sintashta Culture, which is generally considered the homeland of Late Proto-Indo-Iranian, is located to the south from there, and the Volga-Ural Region, where the earlier Indo-Iranian stages developed, is located to the southwest from there.

Late Proto-Uralic began to disintegrate slightly before the Indo-Iranian contacts, apparently soon after 2500 BCE. Disintegration process can be followed first from the lack or presence of Indo-Iranian loanwords, then from different sound substitutions in Uralic (macro-)branches, and finally from (macro-)branch-specific sound changes.

Even though Samoyedic early on formed a center of its own within the Uralic speech community, it was still for a long time spoken close to other Uralic pre-dialects and even participated in the East Uralic sound changes shared by Hungarian, Mansi, and Khanty. Only after that, close to mid-second millennium BCE, Samoyedic could have moved to Southern Siberia, far from all the other Uralic branches.

Consequently, the early stages of the Seima-Turbino Network in Southwest Siberia between 2200–2000 BCE cannot be connected to Uralic languages. However, Uralic languages could have participated in the expansion of the Seima-Turbino Network to Europe from 2000 BCE onward. At the early second millennium BC, the Central Ural Passage was controlled by the Koptyaki Culture. Based on distribution maps, this is exactly the route through which the Seima-Turbino bronze artefacts spread to Europe: Irtysh–Tobol–Iset–Chusovaya–Kama–Volga. (During the actual Late Proto-Uralic, the Ayat Culture prevailed in the Central Ural Region.)

The first Uralic expansion did not reach beyond the Volga-Oka Region, where we find the great Seima center. West Uralic center could be located there, and the Permic center in the other great center in Turbino along Middle Kama. Expansions of Hungarian, Mansi, and Khanty can be derived from the Central Ural Region, and only Samoyedic moved farther to the east. Later phases of Uralic expansion have been considered in the works of Asko Parpola and Valter Lang, with whom my model is compatible.

Very interesting. Can you also detail a little about what were the stages before Late Proto-Uralic or that's already speculation territory? The distribution of haplogroup N seem to point to a much more eastern place of origin of speakers of Uralic languages, as far east as Yakutia. Can that be considered the earliest stage of Proto-Uralic?

[Jaska]

Very interesting. Can you also detail a little about what were the stages before Late Proto-Uralic or that's already speculation territory? The distribution of haplogroup N seem to point to a much more eastern place of origin of speakers of Uralic languages, as far east as Yakutia. Can that be considered the earliest stage of Proto-Uralic?

Beyond Late Proto-Uralic, there are many competing views and contradicting evidence. There are scholars supporting at least Indo-Uralic, Uralo-Altaic, Uralo-Yukaghiric, and Uralo-Eskimo connections (either areal or genealogical). At that time depth it is possible that we will never achieve conclusive evidence to find out which of these suggestions is the real one. 

So, if the distant Pre-Proto-Uralic was spoken in Central or Eastern Siberia, it could be connected to the Yakutia_LNBA ancestry. But if it was spoken in European Russia, it could be connected to some EHG-related ancestry. Genetic migrations have occurred in all times and to different directions, and loosely taken any one of them could be related to the speakers of certain pre-proto-language. The linguistic results must therefore guide the interpretation, when the language is concerned. But unfortunately in the case of Pre-Proto-Uralic, there is no conclusive evidence. 

Hopefully we will get ancient DNA samples from the Central Ural Region in the late 3rd and early 2nd millennium BCE; it would be interesting to see, what kind of genetic composition the populations of the Ayat and Koptyaki Cultures consisted of, and how well they agree with the model of Uralic expansion proposed in my article. Later Mezhovskaya samples we already have.

[Parastais]

“ The partial overlapping of the Fatyanovo-Balanovo and the Abashevo Cultures could explain the regionally spread features shared by Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian, like satemization and the ruki-rule (see Section 2.3), as suggested by Parpola (2022: 264).”
Absolutely nothing Baltoslavic in Fatyanovo - Balanovo.
Autosomally, Y, archeologically Baltoslavic better fits to Trzciniets cultural complex (maybe part of it, such as Sosnitsa), other parts dying out linguistically). I am also not aware of linguistic hard No’s for this. Many linguists are writing about BS Fatyanovo but that is circular reasoning based on Baltic hydronyms that I am sure had nothing to do with Fatyanovo and I am not sure if they even covered all F.
BS and II had many touchpoints anyway. For satemization or For ruki (also Albanian had ruki in some way). We are not deriving Albanian from F. Are we?

[PopGenist82]

Aside from being disconnected with the current evidence base, the entire thesis is a false construct. The author believes a nonexistent people from the middle Urals with no cultural glue created a vast language expansion because of a “genes don’t speak languages” non-falsifiability clause the author has constructed for himself

[Jaska]

“ The  partial  overlapping  of  the  Fatyanovo-Balanovo  and  the  Abashevo  Cultures  could  explain  the  regionally  spread  features  shared  by  Balto-Slavic  and  Indo-Iranian,  like  satemization  and  the  ruki-rule  (see  Section  2.3),  as  suggested  by  Parpola (2022: 264).”
Absolutely nothing Baltoslavic in Fatyanovo - Balanovo.
Autosomally, Y, archeologically Baltoslavic better fits to Trzciniets cultural complex (maybe part of it, such as Sosnitsa), other parts dying out linguistically). I am also not aware of linguistic hard No’s for this. Many linguists are writing about BS Fatyanovo but that is circular reasoning based on Baltic hydronyms that I am sure had nothing to do with Fatyanovo and I am not sure if they even covered all F.
BS and II had many touchpoints anyway. For satemization or For ruki (also Albanian had ruki in some way). We are not deriving Albanian from F. Are we?

1. Development of PIE *s in Albanian is very complicated, and although the result is sh before u and i, there are three other reflexes, and no trace of change to sh before r or k. Therefore, it is most probably independent process in Albanian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_l...spondences

2. Naturally the Baltic hydronyms are only Baltic, not Proto-Balto-Slavic. Nobody claims anything about Proto-Balto-Slavic based on them, as far as I know.

3. There are Proto-Balto-Slavic loanwords in West Uralic, including Mordvin (earlier spoken even to the west from Oka, but not far). There are also loanwords from later Balto-Slavic stages (proposed Para-Slavic loanwords, and also Baltic loanwords different from the extant Baltic languages), which shows that the Balto-Slavic diversity reached further to the east than one would assume based only on the extant and historically attested Baltic and Slavic languages. 

To conclude: the extant languages are only the westernmost remnants of earlier much wider Balto-Slavic region reaching to the east. Therefore, you cannot locate Proto-Balto-Slavic based only on the extant and historical varieties: it would lead to an erroneous result.

4. There are several genetic or archaeological roots and influxes in every region. You cannot just decide that one of them represents Proto-Balto-Slavic. It is more a rule than an exception that the genetic composition of language carriers changes from step to step of linguistic expansion. Therefore, you cannot just randomly pick one haplogroup seen in the later populations and claim that when you follow it back in time, you will automatically find the language carriers. That is neither reliable nor scientific method - that is only guessing. There is absolutely no law of nature requiring that language always follows the majority genetic root.

[Parastais]

“ The  partial  overlapping  of  the  Fatyanovo-Balanovo  and  the  Abashevo  Cultures  could  explain  the  regionally  spread  features  shared  by  Balto-Slavic  and  Indo-Iranian,  like  satemization  and  the  ruki-rule  (see  Section  2.3),  as  suggested  by  Parpola (2022: 264).”
Absolutely nothing Baltoslavic in Fatyanovo - Balanovo.
Autosomally, Y, archeologically Baltoslavic better fits to Trzciniets cultural complex (maybe part of it, such as Sosnitsa), other parts dying out linguistically). I am also not aware of linguistic hard No’s for this. Many linguists are writing about BS Fatyanovo but that is circular reasoning based on Baltic hydronyms that I am sure had nothing to do with Fatyanovo and I am not sure if they even covered all F.
BS and II had many touchpoints anyway. For satemization or For ruki (also Albanian had ruki in some way). We are not deriving Albanian from F. Are we?

1. Development of PIE *s in Albanian is very complicated, and although the result is sh before u and i, there are three other reflexes, and no trace of change to sh before r or k. Therefore, it is most probably independent process in Albanian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_l...spondences

2. Naturally the Baltic hydronyms are only Baltic, not Proto-Balto-Slavic. Nobody claims anything about Proto-Balto-Slavic based on them, as far as I know.

3. There are Proto-Balto-Slavic loanwords in West Uralic, including Mordvin (earlier spoken even to the west from Oka, but not far). There are also loanwords from later Balto-Slavic stages (proposed Para-Slavic loanwords, and also Baltic loanwords different from the extant Baltic languages), which shows that the Balto-Slavic diversity reached further to the east than one would assume based only on the extant and historically attested Baltic and Slavic languages. 

To conclude: the extant languages are only the westernmost remnants of earlier much wider Balto-Slavic region reaching to the east. Therefore, you cannot locate Proto-Balto-Slavic based only on the extant and historical varieties: it would lead to an erroneous result.

4. There are several genetic or archaeological roots and influxes in every region. You cannot just decide that one of them represents Proto-Balto-Slavic. It is more a rule than an exception that the genetic composition of language carriers changes from step to step of linguistic expansion. Therefore, you cannot just randomly pick one haplogroup seen in the later populations and claim that when you follow it back in time, you will automatically find the language carriers. That is neither reliable nor scientific method - that is only guessing. There is absolutely no law of nature requiring that language always follows the majority genetic root.

(1) Neutralization of the opposition between palatovelars and labiovelars after *u and *s, yielding a palatovelar before *i and a plain velar elsewhere (cf. Steensland 1973: 34, Kortlandt 1979: 58). This development belongs to the Proto-IndoEuropean period (stages 1.2 and 1.3 of my chronology). 
(2) Rephonemicization of the opposition between fortes (“voiceless”) and lenes (“voiced aspirates”) as an opposition between voiceless and (plain) voiced stops. This was a shared innovation of all Indo-European languages except Anatolian and Tocharian and therefore belongs to the dialectal Indo-European period (my stage 2.1). The (lenes) glottalic stops (traditionally called “plain voiced”) became preglottalized voiced at this stage (cf. Kortlandt 1978a: 110). 
(3) Retraction of *s to *ṣ after *i, *u, *r, *k in Balto-Slavic, Albanian, Armenian, and Indo-Iranian. The highly specific character of this sound change points to a common, dialectal Indo-European development (my stage 2.2). 
(4) Depalatalization of the palatovelars before resonants unless the latter were followed by a front vowel, e.g. Slavic slovo ‘word’, Greek κλέος, but Lith. klausýti ‘to listen’ (cf. Kortlandt 1978b). This development was common to Balto-Slavic and Albanian and can therefore be dated to the end of the dialectal Indo-European period (my stage 2.3).

[Jaska]

Parastais, you forgot to mention your source.

[Parastais]

Parastais, you forgot to mention your source.

https://www.kortlandt.nl/publications/art253e.pdf

or here:
https://www.academia.edu/37930177/Balto_...do_Iranian

basically he keeps insisting that nearest relative of Balto-Slavic is Albanian rather than Indo-Iranian.

***
If you got a package of Trzciniets type of ceramics + Y line under R1a-Z280 + Balto-Slavic autosomal drift, then according to Occam razor Balto-Slavic tongue could be added to that package. Unless there is a strong linguistic counterargument which I had not seen. Like I wrote elsewhere, for example, Kallio has no problems stating that Trzciniets-Komarovo-Sosnitsa complex was likely Balto-Slavic.

Linguistic arguments for BaltoSlavic in Fatyanovo are weak. The idea of BS Fatyanovo comes from same age when Finnic/Uralic Comb Ceramic was proposed and Fatyanovo vs Comb Ceramic was seen as Baltic-Finnic interactions. It was based mainly on (false) idea of archeological continuity from F to Baltic forest cultures (no more pursued by archeologysts) and on Baltic hydronyms map which overlapped (not perfectly) to previous Fatyanovo culture.

Actually since you yourself wrote on BS loanwords in Dialectal West Uralic, then it does not contradict idea that temporarily BS arrived into Russian forests at/around DWU, which if I am not mistaken is roughly when first TCC pioneers arrived into Russian forests.

[VladMC]

The hypothesis is interesting. I will not touch upon linguistics, but the following can be said regarding archeology. The Koptyakovo culture is truly ideal in time and place for the Ural homeland. However, there is one weak point here, it is rather linguistic. The Koptyakovo culture is a society of metallurgists - hunters, oddly enough. And if everything is more or less normal with hunters, then as for metallurgy there is a question. If Koptyakovo were proto-Ural, then the proto-Ural language should have a large number of terms related to metallurgy. Are there such terms? The Koptyakovo culture is interpreted by archaeologists as a mix of the local late Ayat culture with the alien early Alakul culture (perhaps it was even some kind of northern derivative of the Abashevo culture) and the alien Karasyozersk culture. The later Ayat culture is a descendant of the earlier Siberian Sosnovoostrovskaya culture (in the G25 database there is an example of this culture - Sosnoviy. This is a typical WSHG). With the early Alakul (Abashevo northern derivative) it is also more or less clear - these are steppe people. The most interesting thing here is the Karasyeozersky culture. Its origins are archaeologists they see in the Samus culture the Central Siberia (Tomsk region). That is, a connection with the central Siberian region can be traced here.
Indeed, the ceramics of the Koptyakovo culture are found on the middle and upper Kama in the Perm region and are called the Zaosinovskaya culture. Subsequently, the Zaosinovskaya culture was transformed into the Lugovskaya culture and the Cherkaskul culture. Further on the basis the Lugovskaya culture and the Cherkassul culture formed the Atabaevo culture and then the Maklashevo culture. On the basis of the Maklashevo culture, the Akozino-Akhmylovo culture with axes of the Melar type and the Ananino culture with axes of the Ananino type were formed.

[Jaska]

Kortlandt seems to be alone with his view. Much more recent source: Hyllested & Joseph 2022: Albanian.
https://bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/u.osu.edu/...ph-v03.pdf

“Ultimately, although no consensus prevails as to the exact classification of Albanian, we argue here that lexical and morphological isoglosses point to a Greek-Albanian subgroup, a grouping suggested by computational phylogenetic methodology in Chang et al. 2015 (see Section 13.5.2; note also Holm 2011).”

Between Albanian and Balto-Slavic, the only mentioned apparently shared sound change is Winter’s Law, and even that may not be real: “although this may alternatively reflect compensatory lengthening with the loss of the stop (Hyllested 2013).” Albanian changes are not connected to the Ruki-rule.

There are shared words between Albanian and Balto-Slavic, but more between only Albanian and one BS branch.

Parastais:

“If you got a package of Trzciniets type of ceramics + Y line under R1a-Z280 + Balto-Slavic autosomal drift, then according to Occam razor Balto-Slavic tongue could be added to that package. Unless there is a strong linguistic counterargument which I had not seen. Like I wrote elsewhere, for example, Kallio has no problems stating that Trzciniets-Komarovo-Sosnitsa complex was likely Balto-Slavic.”

At some point the Balto-Slavic language surely was involved. But you cannot see from DNA or material remains, when and from where the language arrived. As I said, language does not necessarily follow the majority genetic root.

I do not deny that Balto-Slavic language may have been present in the Dnieper Region during the 2nd millennium BCE, because that is after the Fatyanovo Culture. In the Upper Dnieper Region, the Trzciniec Circle even followed Fatyanovo. Certainly there must be some traits of continuity there.

Parastais:

“Linguistic arguments for BaltoSlavic in Fatyanovo are weak. The idea of BS Fatyanovo comes from same age when Finnic/Uralic Comb Ceramic was proposed and Fatyanovo vs Comb Ceramic was seen as Baltic-Finnic interactions. It was based mainly on (false) idea of archeological continuity from F to Baltic forest cultures (no more pursued by archeologysts) and on Baltic hydronyms map which overlapped (not perfectly) to previous Fatyanovo culture.”

Actually, the supporters of continuity theories assumed that the Baltic loanwords were brought to Finland by the Corded Ware people. Anyway, modern views are not grounded on outdated views but purely on linguistic evidence: (1) shared innovations between Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic, and (2) traces of different early Balto-Slavic language stages in the more eastern regions than can be assumed if we look only the extant languages.

Parastais:

“Actually since you yourself wrote on BS loanwords in Dialectal West Uralic, then it does not contradict idea that temporarily BS arrived into Russian forests at/around DWU, which if I am not mistaken is roughly when first TCC pioneers arrived into Russian forests.”

Para-Slavic is that late, but Archaic Balto-Slavic is earlier. And Kallio presents Proto-Balto-Slavic loanwords in West Uralic, but unfortunately he has not yet published his work.

[Jaska]

VladMC:

“If Koptyakovo were proto-Ural, then the proto-Ural language should have a large number of terms related to metallurgy. Are there such terms?”

Late Proto-Uralic itself is a bit earlier, but the Uralic expansion only began during the 2nd millennium. When also the knowledge of metallurgy arrived in the region only ca. 2000 BCE, this corresponds the metal words, apparently being a bit later than LPU itself. An old compound metal name is found only in Permic and Mansi, in both sides of the Urals. I have proposed that the first part of this compound could be a Late Proto-Indo-Iranian (or Proto-Iranian, lacking the diagnostic sounds) borrowing.
https://www.academia.edu/103067313/An_ol...metal_name

[SeriesOfExtraordinaryEvents]

Late Proto-Uralic itself is a bit earlier, but the Uralic expansion only began during the 2nd millennium. When also the knowledge of metallurgy arrived in the region only ca. 2000 BCE, this corresponds the metal words, apparently being a bit later than LPU itself. 

Some of the Finnic isoglosses related to metals, forging and smithery are quite clear early Indo-Iranian loans, one way or another. Even if they are not found in other Uralic branches is not very important here imo.  There is no way they could have been loaned at vicinity of Baltic sea. Speakers of pre-Finnic (west Uralic) must have brought the words with them, regardless what happened to these words in other branches of Uralic (or even if they never existed in them in first place!). 

I'm speaking about words like Seppä ('smith'), Vasara ('hammer'), Takoa ('forge') and even Vaaja ('thunderbolt'). Perhaps also Hopea ('silver'). I'm not venturing into gold/yellow terminology as it's way too fuzzy and confusing even on IE side of things.

These words are not only technical but also religious in sense, mythological and deep rooted in the belief system on skygod-smithgod. This could mean that such a cult was present in your proposed Seima-center (~West Uralic), as considering the nature of entire Seima-Turbino, with weapon sacrificials, it would make lot of sense. 

Ps. Thank you for the paper. It does have merit and the image makes lot of sense. Unfortunately most of the information about Koptyaki culture seems to be hidden behind the cryptography method called Cyrillic alphabet, making it difficult to research the topic from archeological perspective.