--- In cybalist@..., "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...> wrote:
> A broader horizon... Is this related to John Croft's mention of the
> Swiderian culture. I remember there being an early culture
> spreading from the Baltic area towards Europe's north but I thought
> this was exceedingly early for it to be identified with the Uralic
> speaking population. Keep in mind that Uralic and Yukaghir are
> seriously being considered as related. Yukaghir is further to the
> east and north, which suggests that a Proto-UralicYukaghir
> language would either be in the same general location as Uralic, or
> further to the _east_ circa 5000 BCE. Therefore, a migration from
> the Urals to Europe by Uralic-speaking peoples could not take
> place until 4000 BCE (the date of Common Uralic) and even then,
> because of the interaction of FinnoUgric with IndoIranian, we have
> severe problems with this idea unless we want to employ the
> Samoyeds to this theory.
>
Well, firstly, I know linguists are loathe to project language groups
into the palaeolithic or even mesolithic. As to John Croft's
Swiderian culture, I'm unfamiliar with it and would have to dig out
my notes to read up on it. Terminal palaeolithic, wasn't it? I'd also
have to look up info on the so-called 'circum-polar culture' where
mesolithic peoples had similar tool kits and survival strategies from
Lappland to (some say) Arctic North America. This might lend support
to some language relationship but, as in the steppe, similar cultural
remains means firstly that the climate and terrain dictated what a
successful culture needed for the times.
For instance, claiming that all the steppe peoples were Iranian
because the Scythians were is simplistic. We believe that the Getae
were Thracian, and we don't know when the Magyars or earlier Ugrians
walked out of the cold forest and adapted to the steppes or the first
Altaics on the eastern steppes.
While relating the NE Siberian language groups like Yukagir and Ket
to Uralic and Na Dene of Alaska and NW Canada is always intriguing,
I'm still waiting for something definitive to be published.
As I recall, Samoyed is from the Ugrian branch of Uralic? I do recall
theories identifying a Uralic population found in the Minusinsk basin
or somewhere nearby I believe found by the first Russians in the
area.
The pitted ware culture was characterized by dimpled pots with
pointed bottoms that were suspended into fires of the hunter-
gatherers. I don't know the date range, but it was still in the
boreal forest areas of the Baltic and north Russia during the
Neolithic.
It was still there when the Ertebolle people were adopting some
Neolithic techniques like polished stone tools, and when the so-
called "Forest Neolithic" Fatyanovo culture was taking root in
central Russia. The latter I think we can be certain was a Finnish-
speaking population, with the culture derived from cultural diffusion
of some implements of the early IE neolithic cultures to the south.
IMO much of the Russian population is made up of a Finnic basal
population, Slavicized with an influx of Slavs beginning about the
5th or 6th century ... then there were those dang Tatars.
>
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