Locating Pre Proto Uralic

[Queequeg]

Now that the thread Locating Proto Uralic was closed it might be a good idea to discuss the location of Pre Proto Uralic, for instance based on that what we know, or don't, of the lexical similarities between Uralic and other languages. For starters, Helimski mentions a rather interesting word here:

https://www.slm.uni-hamburg.de/ifuu/down...ad-uew.pdf

"[UEW 430] *sala ‘verstecken, verhehlen, stehlen; Dieb’ U (Janh. (10) *sala) (Samm.
*sala) Berlin 9. PTu *ta‡la- ‘to rob, plunder, destroy’ (see for details Räsänen VEWT 458;
Clauson 492; ESTYa III 135-137). The word has many derivatives, as e.g. Old Turkic talaš-
‘to fight, to argue, to quarreľ, talɨm ‘rapacious, audaciouś (DTS 528-529), and is borrowed
as Mong. tala- ‘to rob, plunder, destroy’. PSam *talä- ‘to steaľ (Janhunen SW 150)
from PUr *sala- ‘to stay hidden, to steaľ (Rédei UEW 430-431). Unlike some examples
cited above, this Uralic etymology raises no doubts (see Janhunen JSFOu 77: 222;
Sammallahti UL 540); its network of derivatives in Samoyedic is also big enough (Janhu-
nen SW 150-151). It is absolutely acceptable from the phonetic viewpoint to suggest a
borrowing (at a relatively early time) from Samoyedic into Turkic, but the idea encounters
semantic problems. The Samoyedic forms refer to the domain of everyday life, while PTu
*ta‡la- is known mostly as a military term. The- refore the suggested etymology must be
qualified as acceptable at best, and it will be reasonable to refrain from tentative comments
on the possible - potentially very intersting for a historian - backgrounds for such borro-
wing./ /Hu < Vg (Хел.)/ /NNB zu Juk \olo in UEW /882"

From a layman's point of view the word seems to be the same and might for instance be a sign of an East Siberian superstratum in Uralic, provided that Pre Proto Uralic was first spoken near Ural mountains. Other candidates? Uralic *kura ‘knife’ ~ Yukaghir *kire ‘knife’ ( Yakutia?) and Uralic *ńe̮lǝ ‘arrow’ ~ Tungusic *ńure ‘arrow’ ( Trans-Baikal/Amur?) were already mentioned by Jaska elsewhere.

[Queequeg]

Quoting Jaska further here: "If random wanderers would suffice as the source of loanwords, we should see in every language dozens of loanwords from very distant languages. But we do not see that: languages tend to have loanwords only from their neighbor languages (before the modern era). Also large groups of immigrants from a remote region are enough, and the influence of such colonies is usually seen widely also culturally and genetically. "

Now that we know that Yakutia_LNBA type of groups were migrating to Central Ural area and mixing there with the locals, possibly even assuming the local speech, shouldn't we see linguistic signs of that process in modern Uralic? I'm personally happy to buy the idea of Pre Proto Uralic first spoken in Central Ural area, not by Yakutia_LNBA people, but I'd then like to see for instance a very eastern Siberian superstratum in the language.

Related, brilliant paper BTW:

Jaakko Häkkinen On locating Proto-Uralic
No. 68 (2023): Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen

https://journal.fi/fuf/article/view/120910/86381

[Jaska]

There are proposed connections (either contacts or relatedness) between Uralic and many other language families. Thus far none of them seem to contain stronger evidence than other proposals, so we cannot say whether Pre-Proto-Uralic was spoken in Europe or in Asia/Siberia.
- Indo-Uralic
- Ural-Altaic
- Ural-Eskimo
- Ural-Yukaghir

I must admit that I have not been so interested in these possible connections of the very remote past, because the limits of historical linguistics are apparent in that time depth, and we cannot choose between the contradicting proposals. Scholars seem to believe in the view which they have studied themselves, which is natural. But the mainstream cannot believe in any of them, until one proposal is proven much stronger than the others.

[Queequeg]

There are proposed connections (either contacts or relatedness) between Uralic and many other language families. Thus far none of them seem to contain stronger evidence than other proposals, so we cannot say whether Pre-Proto-Uralic was spoken in Europe or in Asia/Siberia.
- Indo-Uralic
- Ural-Altaic
- Ural-Eskimo
- Ural-Yukaghir

I must admit that I have not been so interested in these possible connections of the very remote past, because the limits of historical linguistics are apparent in that time depth, and we cannot choose between the contradicting proposals. Scholars seem to believe in the view which they have studied themselves, which is natural. But the mainstream cannot believe in any of them, until one proposal is proven much stronger than the others.

Yes, but I think that this recent paper of yours is a kind of a game changer, related to the latest genetic results. Maybe the whole idea of Ural-Altaic etc. is a dead end, because Uralic never came from East Siberia, unlike Yakutia_LNBA. If this is the case, we should however see traces, such as loan words, of the linguistic interaction between the original speakers of Uralic and Yakutia_LNBA groups in modern Uralic, cf. "Old Norman contained Old Norse loanwords unknown in other Old French dialects at that time."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Norman

[Psynome]

I have to say I am still in favor of the earlier predecessor of PU being associated with Yakutia_LNBA people.

The high proportion of Yakutia_LNBA type ancestry along with the strongly Uralic associated N1a1a1a1a L392 in some of the burials from the Rostovka site just east of the Koptyaki culture and presented in the Zeng paper provides some pretty suggestive evidence to me, considering the acknowledged southern (Sintashta-Andronovo) and eastern (Seima-Turbino) influences in the formation of Koptyaki.

[Ebizur]

Why does it seem like everyone has forgotten that most present-day Asian/Siberian Uralic speakers do not even belong to Y-DNA haplogroup N-L1026? I have seen many commenters online argue that Nganasans do not exhibit any other sort of autosomal ancestry, so they must be "pure-blooded" descendants of Yakutia_LNBA and Proto-Uralic people, but these commenters never acknowledge the fact that published evidence indicates that most present-day Nganasan males should not belong to Y-DNA haplogroup N-L1026.

I would like to hear someone explain to me why they think it is valid to ignore all the N-P43 and Q Y-DNA found among present-day Asian/Siberian Uralic speakers.

[Jaska]

Why does it seem like everyone has forgotten that most present-day Asian/Siberian Uralic speakers do not even belong to Y-DNA haplogroup N-L1026? I have seen many commenters online argue that Nganasans do not exhibit any other sort of autosomal ancestry, so they must be "pure-blooded" descendants of Yakutia_LNBA and Proto-Uralic people, but these commenters never acknowledge the fact that published evidence indicates that most present-day Nganasan males should not belong to Y-DNA haplogroup N-L1026.

I would like to hear someone explain to me why they think it is valid to ignore all the N-P43 and Q Y-DNA found among present-day Asian/Siberian Uralic speakers.

People often see what they want to see. Concerning old and widespread language families, there is not necessary any single uniparental lineage present in all the populations. Also autosomally there are usually great differences between the most distant populations within a language family. It is easier to trace the genetic correlates with younger and faster expanding language families like Turkic and Mongolic. The more there are steps of expansion, the more probable it is that the genetic composition of language carriers has changed on the way. 

N2-P43 is found in the west up to the Vepsians, but west from them it is extremely marginal. Q is even more weakly represented in Europe. Besides, N3-L1034 (< Z1936) covers Hungarian, Mansi, and Khanty, so only the Samoyedic branch is different. As its birth involves a great leap far away from other Uralic languages, great genetic changes are to be expected. Apparently N2 was more dominant in the Proto-Samoyedic speaking population (to the north from the Sayan Mountains), and N3 less frequent, mainly acquired by those populations which deviated to the west from the Yenisei valley.

[P.S. There are unfortunately still different notations of the N-haplogroups, but N2 = N1b = N1a2, and N3 = N1c = N1a1.]

The Nganasans are not purely of Yakutia ancestry in the qpAdm results by Zeng et al. 2023. And even if they were, this could not mean that the Uralic languages must be connected to the Yakutia ancestry, because the Nganasans are different from all the other Samoyedic populations: they lack the steppe and the EHG ancestries. The Nganasans were the foremost frontier group advancing to the northernmost Siberia and therefore prone to strong admixture with the earlier inhabitants in every steps of their expansion, and small population in the extreme Arctic environment lead to genetic drift, bottleneck etc. 

Even though the modern Nganasans are mainly of Yakutia ancestry, that ancestry was apparently less dominant in the Proto-Samoyedic population near the Sayan Region ca. 2000 years ago, and yet lesser in the Proto-Uralic population in the Central Ural Region ca. 4500 years ago. The population with which the arriving Samoyeds admixed in the Taimyr Peninsula probably was quite purely of the Yakutia ancestry, possibly descendants of the Ymyyakhtakh Culture.

[Queequeg]

I have to say I am still in favor of the earlier predecessor of PU being associated with Yakutia_LNBA people. 

The high proportion of Yakutia_LNBA type ancestry along with the strongly Uralic associated N1a1a1a1a L392 in some of the burials from the Rostovka site just east of the Koptyaki culture and presented in the Zeng paper provides some pretty suggestive evidence to me, considering the acknowledged southern (Sintashta-Andronovo) and eastern (Seima-Turbino) influences in the formation of Koptyaki.

No problem with that either. However, from the linguistic point of view that street seems to be a dead end. Yakutia_LNBA related adstratum/substratum in Uralic however might still be visible. I'm not sure if anyone has really been looking at that yet? Most material I've seen is about Uralic-Altaic or smthg.

The amount of WSHG in the Rostovka burials make me think if the migration of Yakutia_LNBA was based on a couple of waves, instead of just one. Following the migration model towards North in Finland, the first groups might have stayed in the areas East of Ural mountains, mixing with the typical Rostovka individuals, hence we have people like modern Mansi. The following waves just passed the future Mansi area and mixed with the locals West of Ural mountains, ending up having no WSHG. The N-Z1936 of Rostovka seem to have split into East and West Uralic sub lineages around modern Kazan, which might be about right also, taking into account the ancient, much more western speech area of Ugric, including of course Hungarian.

[Parastais]

My bet is origins in Siberia (next to [one of?] big Siberian rivers due to Uralic mythology) geographically, Yakutia_LNBA autosomally and N paternally.


European side was Paleo-Northern-Euro languages (phonotactic features unfamiliar to the Uralic languages as per Jaska) to the North and Indo-European languages (Fatyanovo, Balanovo) to the relative South.
We have cultural (Siberian mythology), genetic (Yakutia_LNBA), archeological (paralels to I think Krotovo culture) impulse from the East into Central Uralic region. So, I bet that impulse also brought Pre-Uralic into Central Urals where in time it developed Proto-Uralic. Some part of them stayed nearby in Siberian side (future Samoyeds), did not participate in first Indo-Iranian loanwords but then got back into circulation for later Indo-Iranian loanwords and East Uralic phonetic changes.

I believe Occam is firmly on my side

[Jaska]

My bet is origins in Siberia (next to [one of?] big Siberian rivers due to Uralic mythology) geographically, Yakutia_LNBA autosomally and N paternally.

European side was Paleo-Northern-Euro languages (phonotactic features unfamiliar to the Uralic languages as per Jaska) to the North and Indo-European languages (Fatyanovo, Balanovo) to the relative South.

We have cultural (Siberian mythology), genetic (Yakutia_LNBA), archeological (paralels to I think Krotovo culture) impulse from the East into Central Uralic region. So, I bet that impulse also brought Pre-Uralic into Central Urals where in time it developed Proto-Uralic. Some part of them stayed nearby in Siberian side (future Samoyeds), did not participate in first Indo-Iranian loanwords but then got back into circulation for later Indo-Iranian loanwords and East Uralic phonetic changes.

I believe Occam is firmly on my side

This is possible. Apparently the Ural-Eskimo or Ural-Yukaghir hypotheses could agree with the Yakutia _LNBA origin of Pre-Proto-Uralic:

"The first turnover occurred with the appearance of the Syalakh-Belkachi population (~6.8-6.2kya, with ~20% admixture from an East Asian source from the Baikal region admixing into the preceding MiddleVitim_Dzhilinda1_M_N_8.4kya). This was followed by a second turnover with the appearance of the Ymyyakhtakh-associated Yakutia_LNBA population (~4.5- 282 3.2kya, with ~50% admixture from Transbaikal_EMN admixing into the preceding Syalakh-Belkachi 283 population). - -
...such Paleo-Eskimo-related ancestry (which is by extension Syalakh-Belkachi-related) then persisted into all later ancient and present-day groups such as Eskimo-Aleuts, Chukotko-Kamchatkans and Yukaghirs on both sides of the Bering Straits." (Zeng et al. 2023)

[ph2ter]

Maybe this PCA of Asia can help:

[Ebizur]

The situation regarding N-P43 and N-L1026 among Uralic-speaking peoples seems to be analogous to the situation regarding R-M17 and R-M269 among Indo-European-speaking peoples.

N-P43 and N-L1026 share a most recent common ancestor in haplogroup N1a-F1206 approximately 17,600 ybp according to 23mofang. R-M17 and R-M269 share a most recent common ancestor in haplogroup R1-M173 approximately 22,790 ybp according to the same source. It is not entirely implausible that both members of N-P43 and members of N-L1026 may have been present among speakers of the Proto-Uralic language and that both members of R-M17 and members of R-M269 may have been present among speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language; however, ancient DNA data demonstrating that members of both clades have been present in the same location at the same time are necessary to support the hypothesis that both clades have been present among the speakers of the respective proto-language. Archaeological evidence indicating that members of both subclades have been practicing the same culture would also be good for corroboration.

The bottom line is, Nganasans cannot be "pure-blooded" descendants of Proto-Uralic speakers if all Proto-Uralic-speaking males have belonged to Y-DNA haplogroup N-L1026 (or, somewhat more broadly, N-Z1957 [TMRCA 8,050 ybp]). There must either be something wrong with any autosomal analysis that has been taken as grounds for making such a claim of "purity," or the Proto-Uralic-speaking population must have included at least some males belonging to N-P43.

[Queequeg]

Quoting Helimski again, similar looking words in Uralic and Tungusic, related to swim bladder of fish or possily just to the idea of a bubble, in more general terms:

"Sam. *kåpətз ‚Schwimmblase (des Fisches)’ ist die mögliche Quelle von ewenk.
kapata id. (SSTMJa. I: 376). Andererseits findet man im Ma.-Tung. weitere mit kapata
vergleichbare Formen mit derselben Bedeutung: ewenk. kepečē (zu kepe- ‚anschwellen’?),
Neghidal āpı, Oltscha χāpa (SSTMJa. I: 376, 452), sowie – beim altaischen Vergleich – kor.
*kapo (EDAL 764). Es ist kaum realistisch, alle diese Bildungen als U / Sam. Lehnwörter zu
betrachten – eher muß man an parallele deskriptive Bildungen oder an Relikte der nostr.
Verwandtschaft (Иллич-Свитыч Эт. 1965: 358) denken. S. noch Аникин & Хелимский.Reading Helmski"

[Queequeg]

Quoting Helimski again: Uralic-Tungusic  "male", in this case a reindeer bull

"Ostj. Kaz. χ¢ r ‚Rentier-Stier’ und nenz. χora > russ. (Sibirien) хор, хóра
‚самец-производитель в оленьем стаде’; ngan. kurii
ia ‚Rentier-Stier’ (Abl. von kuru <
sam. *korå) > ewenk. (SSTMJa. I: 436) kurejka, kurajka, korejka ‘олень (дикий, самец –
весенне-летнее название)’, s. Steinitz, DEWO 536; Аникин ЭС 621-622 (mit Hinweisen
auf mögliche weitere Entlehnungen oder Parallelen), A&X."

EDIT Uralic-Tungusic, something like "pickel, also in a tree". This is weird, the words look even too similar?! SOME MORE EDIT It seems that the word, provided that the meaning is close enough, is almost the same from Baltic Coast to Pasific Coast.

"Andererseit findet sam. *pəktə eine ebenso glaubwürdige und semantisch besser
passende Erklärung als Entlehnung aus ma.-tung. (SSTMJa. II: 367) *pukte ‚Pickel,
бородавка’ (oltsch. пукту, пуктэ, orok. пэуктэ, gold. пa ктэ, хукту, ma. фуху). Die
Entlehnung soll sehr alt sein (der ma.-tung. Stamm kommt in dieser Form nur in den vom
sam. Sprachgebiet entfernten südlichen ma.-tung. Sprachen vor; *u wird durch sam. *ə"

[Ebizur]

Quoting Helimski again, similar looking words in Uralic and Tungusic, related to swim bladder of fish or possily just to the idea of a bubble, in more general terms:

"Sam. *kåpətз ‚Schwimmblase (des Fisches)’ ist die mögliche Quelle von ewenk.
kapata id. (SSTMJa. I: 376). Andererseits findet man im Ma.-Tung. weitere mit kapata
vergleichbare Formen mit derselben Bedeutung: ewenk. kepečē (zu kepe- ‚anschwellen’?),
Neghidal āpı, Oltscha χāpa (SSTMJa. I: 376, 452), sowie – beim altaischen Vergleich – kor.
*kapo (EDAL 764). Es ist kaum realistisch, alle diese Bildungen als U / Sam. Lehnwörter zu
betrachten – eher muß man an parallele deskriptive Bildungen oder an Relikte der nostr.
Verwandtschaft (Иллич-Свитыч Эт. 1965: 358) denken. S. noch Аникин & Хелимский.Reading Helmski"

Korean 가보 kapo (this word alternatively could be transcribed as gabo) does not really mean "swim bladder." It is the name of a particular culinary dish (which, incidentally, does involve the swim bladder of a croaker fish). The Korean word for "swim bladder" is 부레 pure (alternatively, bure).

Proposed "Altaic"/"Transeurasian" etymologies are often of this sort, where a common, everyday noun in one language (family) is compared with a word of extremely specialized meaning and limited usage in another language (family). Even if Korean 가보 kapo ~ gabo did have some relationship with the cited Tungusic words, it might as well be a loanword considering the very specific meaning and the existence of a common noun of clearly different etymology signifying "swim bladder" in the Korean language.[font='나눔바른고딕 옛한글', 'NanumBarunGothic YetHangul', -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, 'Microsoft Yahei', simsun, 'Apple SD Gothic Neo', NanumGothic, Dotum, 새굴림, sans-serif]부 가보 kapo pure etypure레[/font] [font='나눔바른고딕 옛한글', 'NanumBarunGothic YetHangul', -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, 'Microsoft Yahei', simsun, 'Apple SD Gothic Neo', NanumGothic, Dotum, 새굴림, sans-serif]부레[/font]