7. Linguistic development of the Post-Swiderian people
It was assumed above that the languages spoken by the Post-Swiderian
peoples at the end of the Ice Age were Finno-Ugric (traditionally Uralic).
What, then, happened to them later?
The Post-Swiderian peoples moved west and northwest in conjunction
with the resettlement of Northern Europe so that the regions they inhabited coincided largely with the area shown on Map 11. Roughly speaking, we
can claim that the inhabitants of the Post-Swiderian region, in other words,
the “New Eastern Europeans”, migrated to the parts of Europe shown on
Map 11 as part of the resettlement of Northern Europe. This is the region
where even today the people living there constitute both genetically and
anthropologically a fairly homogeneous type. The most suitable name for
these people at the end of the Ice Age would be “Post-Swiderians” or “New
Eastern Europeans”. But after their migration it would perhaps be better to
refer to them as “Northern Europeans”.
The belt to which the “Post-Swiderians” migrated when Northern
Europe was resettled after the Ice Age can also be determined using
archaeological methods. The new region was a belt that followed the
southern and eastern shores of the Baltic when they were laid bare by the
melting ice sheet. During the Early Mesolithic period this was the home of
the Maglemose-Nemen-Kunda chain of cultures (that included at a later
stage also Suomusjärvi), and during the Late Mesolithic period where the
Ertebølle-Nemen-Narva-Sperrings flourished. During the very earliest
stage (before that of Maglemosian culture) when the “Post-Swiderians”
reached what is today Denmark and Northern Germany, they came into
contact with Hamburgian and Ahrensburgian cultures. According to Pauli
Saukkonen (2005) the German archaeologist Alfred Rust “came to the
simple conclusion that the people of Hamburgian and Ahrensburgian
cultures came from the east (Rust 1951: 48–52, 1972: 64) and not from the
Magdalenian regions [Western Europe] as was thought earlier and as is still
assumed in Finland. They [the Hamburgian and Ahrensburgian people] had
narrow Brünn-type faces (after finds made at Brünn) as opposed to the
broad-faced Cro-Magnon type (ibid. 200–201). Finds from Hamburgian
culture reveal Gravettian influence, and it belongs to the sphere of
Abschlag culture, which extended from the Black Sea to Germany (...)”.
It must be assumed that these people had, right up to the final period
of the resettlement of Northern Europe, retained (not only their genetic but)
also their linguistic origins. Perhaps the people of Hamburgian and
Ahrensburgian cultures living in this region still spoke Finno-Ugric
(Uralic) languages.
Map 11.
Map 12.
Map 13.
Map 14.
The linguistic nature of Northern and Eastern Europe subsequently
changed, however, following two different directions: (1) New Finno-
Ugric-speaking (Uralic-speaking) areas were attached to the old one in the
north and northeast (northernmost Fennoscandia, northeasternmost Europe
and Northern Siberia) and (2) the Finno-Ugric-speaking region has shrunk
in the northern parts of Central Europe, Scandinavia, Poland, the Baltic,
White Russia (Belarus) and Russia. At the beginning of the Christian era
the region where Finno-Ugric (Uralic) languages were spoken covered
approximately that shown on Map 12. Map 13 shows three different
regions: (1) a central region where the Post-Swiderian genetic and
linguistic heritage has been preserved, (2) the western region where the
Post-Swiderian genetic heritage persists but where Finno-Ugric languages
have given way to Indo-European languages, and (3) the eastern region
where people with non-Post-Swiderian genetic heritage have adopted a Finno-Ugric (Uralic) language. The people of region 1 represent “the Finns
and their genetic and linguistic relatives” on Map 13, the people of region 2
are “genetic (but not linguistic) relatives of the Finns”, i.e. original
Germanic-speaking, Baltic-speaking and Slavic-speaking peoples, and the
people of region 3 represent “the linguistic (but not genetic) relatives of the
Finns”, i.e. the Northern Sami and Samoyed people.
The language shift from Finno-Ugric to Indo-European in the western
region occurred during the period 5,500–3,000 BC when agriculture
advanced from the south, mainly from the Band Ceramic, or LBK, region,
bringing it to those regions inhabited by Finno-Ugric-speaking hunters. The
spread of agriculture and with it the Indo-European language to the north
took the form primarily of cultural and linguistic diffusion, not demic
diffusion. In other words, it was only agriculture and the Indo-European
language that spread; there was no migration of people. The people
remained largely where they were and only agricultural skills and linguistic
skills (as a consequence of the change of the subsistence system and
language) were transferred. This idea has been put forward by the
archaeologist Marek Zvelebil, for example, and it is now generally
accepted (for example, by Colin Renfrew and Pavel Dolukhanov) (see Map
15, where the boundary of black dots shows how far agriculture spread
mainly as demic diffusion and how north of it agriculture spread as cultural
diffusion). The claim of the cultural rather than demic diffusion of
agriculture is extremely central regarding the origins of the Germanic,
Baltic and Slavic peoples.
Map 15.
This process resulted in the Germanic-speaking, Baltic-speaking and
Slavic-speaking peoples, who even today represent to a large extent the
same genetic and anthropological type as their ancestors, the ancient Post-
Swiderians. The main difference is that they speak a different language
from their ancestors. The evolution of the Finns has been much the same
insofar as they are also of the same genetic and anthropological type as the
Post-Swiderians but they differ from the Germanic, Baltic and Slavic
populations in that they still speak the same Post-Swiderian language as
their ancestors.
There is no firm evidence of the stage at which the northern Sami
underwent the language shift WE > FU (where WE is some western
European language, possibly a form of Basque).
There exist three possibilities (see Map 14 and the three numbered
circles). The first is that the language shift took place at the time when the
genetic ancestors of the Northern Sami lived on the North Sea continent ca.
10,000 BC and represented Brommian culture. The second is that it
occurred within Eastern European Post-Swiderian culture when the
Western Europeans had started moving to Eastern Europe via the Central
European gateway after ca. 13,500 BC. The third possibility is that the
language shift did not take place until ca. 7,500 BC after the land link
between northernmost Fennoscandia and Eastern Karelia had come into
being. The fourth possibility, that the Northern Sami became speakers of a
Finno-Ugric language as late as the Bronze Age can hardly be deemed
credible.
We do not know when the Palaeosiberian people, the ancestors of the
Samoyeds, moved to northeastern Europe and there gave up their
Palaeosiberian tongue in favour of some Finno-Ugric language(s). It has
been thought possible that this did not happen until after 2000 BC.
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