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The Finnic peoples emerged in Baltic after the Bronze Age


A reader in the comments reminds me there has been a preprint which is relevant to the population structure of Baltic Europe which came out a few months ago, Extensive farming in Estonia started through a sex-biased migration from the Steppe:

…Here we present the analyses of low coverage whole genome sequence data from five hunter-gatherers and five farmers of Estonia dated to 4,500 to 6,300 years before present. We find evidence of significant differences between the two groups in the composition of autosomal as well as mtDNA, X and Y chromosome ancestries. We find that Estonian hunter-gatherers of Comb Ceramic Culture are closest to Eastern hunter-gatherers. The Estonian first farmers of Corded Ware Culture show high similarity in their autosomes with Steppe Belt Late Neolithic/Bronze Age individuals, Caucasus hunter-gatherers and Iranian farmers while their X chromosomes are most closely related with the European Early Farmers of Anatolian descent…

As you can see in the PCA plot above the Comb Ceramic Culture and the Corded Ware culture in Estonia are modeled well by the three ancestral populations hypothesis for Europe. The problem with this is that Finns and Russians with Finnic background do not fit with this model. There has been clear later gene flow.

From the text:

Interestingly, modern Estonians showed a bigger proportion of the blue component [associated with European hunter-gatherers] than CWC individuals. Comparing to CCC individuals, modern Estonians lack the red component [Eastern Siberian]. This, together with the absence of Y chromosome hg N in CCC and CWC, points to further influx and change of genetic material after the arrival of CWC.

The sample sizes are small. Additionally these are from Estonia, not Finland. But the Comb Ceramic Culture was widespread throughout the region.

Also, from a 2015 paper (supplements):

Among the northern Europeans, the Finnish (finni3) show evidence of an admixture event involving a minority source most similar to contemporary North Siberians (469CE (213BCE-1011CE)). Finns are thought to have originated from the northward migration, and subsequent contact, between Central Europeans and indigenous Scandinavian hunter-gatherers closely related to the Saami [S33]. The Saami are closely related to the individuals that make up the North Siberian world region, and whilst our confidence in this admixture date is low because of the small size of the cluster, the event we see is likely to represent this key period in Finnish history.

The “North Siberia” cluster are: Selkup, Chukchi, Dolgan, Ket, Koryak, Nganassan, Yakut and Yukagir. The admixture is very recent. I suspect too recent. But it gets us to the qualitative point that the Siberian admixture into Finns is probably not that old.

Related: The Origin of the Finnic Peoples.

5 thoughts on “The Finnic peoples emerged in Baltic after the Bronze Age

  1. That Busby date is indeed recent, but with standard error in mind compatible with the scenario of the linguistics paper I linked in a previous comment (Saami settlement encompassing entire Finland beyond some coastal colonies pre-300 CE). They note that admixture into Uralic-speaking Mordovians of Volga region, as well as into other populations living in Russia, comes from different clusters. It’s tempting to suggest Busby’s “North Siberian” is a Saami proxy given the dates, and the supplements reveal it’s quite restricted into Finland and to a lesser degree Norway in Europe.

  2. I’d like explore more modern times and, specifically, how a N1c/N-M261 individual was born in Suffolk, England circa 1605 with an English surname and presumably English parents? I have a theory and it involves Vikings and a non-paternity event several centuries before.

    That said, all I have to postulate on is an exceedingly rare Y occurence for East Anglia. I know N was rare among the Viking peoples (from your post and others) but have seen where their attacks included the area that is now Finland. Seems reasonable that they would taken prisoners and impressed some into taking up arms and those same Finns might have participated in Viking forays along the English coast.

    Is this all beyond credulity given limited DNA samples we have available today?

  3. The Language Contact Situation in Prehistoric Northeastern Europe

    https://www.academia.edu/20252178/Th…eastern_Europe

    On Germanic-Saami contacts and Saami prehistory

    http://www.academia.edu/1959273/On_G…ami_prehistory

    Spatiotemporal Contributions to the Linguistic Prehistory of Fennoscandia

    ​https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/135714

    Kaleva and his Sons from Kalanti –On the Etymology of Certain Names in Finnic Mythology

    http://www.linguistics.fi/julkaisut/…2/Heikkila.pdf

    THE MIGRATION PERIOD, PRE-VIKING AGE, AND VIKING AGE IN ESTONIA

    http://www.academia.edu/2237217/THE_…AGE_IN_ESTONIA

  4. Riho Grünthal: Introduction: an interdisciplinary perspective on prehistoric Northern Europe [PDF]
    Mika Lavento: Cultivation among hunter-gatherers in Finland – evidence of activated connections? [PDF]
    Charlotte Damm: From Entities to Interaction: Replacing pots and people with networks of transmission [PDF]
    Luobbal Sámmol Sámmol Ánte (Ante Aikio): An essay on Saami ethnolinguistic prehistory [PDF]
    Asko Parpola: Formation of the Indo-European and Uralic (Finno-Ugric) language families in the light of archaeology: Revised and integrated ‘total’ correlations [PDF]
    Tiit-Rein Viitso: Early Metallurgy in Language: The History of Metal Names in Finnic [PDF]
    Karl Pajusalu: Phonological Innovations of the Southern Finnic Languages [PDF]
    Petri Kallio: The Prehistoric Germanic Loanword Strata in Finnic [PDF]
    Guus Kroonen: Non-Indo-European root nouns in Germanic: evidence in support of the Agricultural Substrate Hypothesis [PDF]
    Santeri Junttila: The prehistoric context of the oldest contacts between Baltic and Finnic languages [PDF]
    Riho Grünthal: Baltic loanwords in Mordvin [PDF]

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