Re: [tied] Re: Indo-European for Indo-European

Juha,

Thanks for the earnest reply.

It is a pity that you have no interest in discussing details of the Saami origin topic, because you might share many interesting details.

However phrases like

" It suffices to say that the core areas for the emergence of the distinctive Sámi language (family) and the Sámi culture seem to have been, already 5000 years ago, the very areas they have been living in ever since"

make me recollect some Indians scholars who claim that Indo-Arian seem have been, already 5000 years ago, the very areas they have been living in ever since.

Let's look at the taxonomic position of the Saami language - it represents just a subsubgroup of the Finnic subgroup of the Finno-Ugric group of the Uralic linguistic family. In other words, the Saami language differs from, say, the Komi language in the same degree as the latter differs from the Mordovian languages. Fortunately, we are able to trace with a good reliability the roots of the Komi and the Mordovians back till the Middle Bronze Age:

Modern Komi < Rodanovskaya culture (9-15 centuries AD) < Kharino-Lomovatovskaya c. (4-9 c. AD) < Pyanoborskaya c. (3 c. BC - 4 c. AD) < Ananyinskaya c. (8-3 c. BC) < Prikazanskaya c. (14 - 8 c. BC) < Seymino-Turbino c. ( Middle Bronze Age)

Modern Mordva < Middle Age Mordovian sites (5-15 c. AD) < Gorodetskaya c. (7 c. BC - 5 c. AD) < Chirkovskaya c. (16-8 c. BC) < Seymino-Turbino c. ( Middle Bronze Age)

Thus, the ancestors of Komi and Mordva parted in the Late Bronze Age (about 3500 years ago) somewhere in the Middle Volga region. As Komi is approximately at the equal "taxonomic distance" from Mordva, Finns and Saami, the latter had to stand apart other Finnic peoples approximately at the same period (one can guess that this took place somewhere in the Upper Volga region or south the Ladoga-Onega basin). If Saami parted other Finno-Ugric tribes as early as 5000 years ago they would be classified as a special group of the Uralic family side by side with Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic ones, would not they?

Kind regards,

Alexander

----- Original Message -----

From: Juha Savolainen

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Sunday, August 31, 2003 4:27 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Indo-European for Indo-European

Alexander,

I am afraid that you have sort of missed the "real thing" here...:) But never mind, I am obliged to give an earnest reply to you all the same...

On Tacitus: it would be a bit naive to take his description of far-flung tribes as an accurrate anthropological account. He was a Roman with a particular perspective on "barbarians" and he was, by his own admission, poorly informed of the people living in the Far North. However, this does not mean that we should dismiss his description of the Fenni as wholly worthless.

First, the poverty he describes may have something to do with the impoverished material culture of the Early Iron Age period in Finland, although things had by then taken a turn into a greater prosperity, precisely because of the stimulating influence of the Roman Empire on local trade. We know now that Finlans was not totally depopulated during the Early Iron Age period (just before the Common Era), but it is nevertheless true that compared with the relatively rich Bronze Age material culture, the Early Iron Age was a bleak period.

Given these conditions, the ethnic identity of the people (whether Finnish, Sámi or someone else) cannot have made much difference in the material culture and ways of living, at least for the eyes of Roman authors. After all, even the words "sabme" and "Häme" seem to have the same origin - which is just what can be expected if both Sámi-speaking and Finnish-speaking hunters and fishers were active in Häme at the time.

But all this presupposes that Tacitus´ account deals with people living in the area of present-day Finland. This is by no means self-evident. The account in its totality is as follows:

Chapter 46. Here Suebia ends. I do not know whether to class the tribes of the Peucini, Venedi, and Fenni with the Germans or with the Sarmatians. The Peucini, however, who are sometimes called Bastarnae, are like Germans in their language, manner of life, and mode of settlement and habitation. Squalor is universal among them and their nobles are indolent. Mixed marriages are giving them something of the repulsive appearance of the Sarmatians. The Venedi have adopted many Sarmatian habits; for their plundering forays take them over all the wooded and mountainous highlands that lie between the Peucini and the Fenni. Nevertheless, they are on the whole to be classed as Germans; for they have settled homes, carry shields, and are fond of traveling - and traveling fast - on foot, differing in all these respects from the Sarmatians, who live in wagons or on horseback. The Fenni are astonishingly savage and disgustingly poor. They have no proper weapons, no horses, no homes. they eat wild herbs, dress in skins, and sleep on the ground. Their only hope of getting better fare lies in their arrows, which, for lack of iron, they tip with bone. The women support themselves by hunting, exactly like the men; they accompany them everywhere and insist on taking their share in bringing down the game. The only way they have of protecting their infants against wild beasts or bad weather is to hide them under a makeshift covering of interlaced branches. Such is the shelter to which the young folk come back and in which the old must lie. Yet they count their lot happier than that of others who groan over field labor, sweat over house-building, or hazard their own and other men's fortunes in the hope of profit and the fear of loss. Unafraid of anything that man or god can do to them, they have reached a state that few human beings can attain: for these men are so well content that they do not even need to pray for anything. What comes after them is the stuff of fables - Hellusii and Oxiones with the faces and features of men, the bodies and limbs of animals. On such unverifiable stories I shall express no opinion.

One could claim with equal justice that Tacitus is here trying to describe what his sources have told him about the Sámi or Sámi-like tribes living, say, in Västerbotten. If this were indeed the case, then we could ask who were the "Hellusii and Oxiones with the faces and features of men, the bodies and limbs of animals"? It has been seriously proposed that the whatever information Tacitus may have had about Finnish speaking tribes might be related to these "Hellusii" and "Oxiones", not least because of their apparently totemic clan practices. And there are others who have suspected that the "Sithoni" of Tacitus may have had something to do with Finnish speaking tribes.

As for the savagery of the Sámi, well, that would be viewing cultures based on fishing, hunting and herding from the perspective of a poorly informed Roman patrician. Needless to say, that is not my perspective and I have no interest whatsoever to play down the ingeniousness of the Sámi people. The whole topic of the Sámi (pre)history is fascianating, both in its own right and because of the light it casts on the emergence and the evolution of Finnish language and culture as well as even on the problem of the Indo-European dispersal. But I will not take up this important issue here. It suffices to say that the core areas for the emergence of the distinctive Sámi language (family) and the Sámi culture seem to have been, already 5000 years ago, the very areas they have been living in ever since. That raises many interesting questions, but I shall leave them for some later occasion.

Best regards, Juha