Setu People – The Oldest Settled People In Europe

[Comte Arnau]

Basques yes, Iberians no. Now the questions remains. The Basques were in Europe at the time when the Setu people were settled, but were the Basques also already settled in their current areas?

Several disciplines (genetics, linguistics, archeology...) point to the conclusion that Basques (or Baskoid peoples) have been living near the Pyrenean area for more than 30,000 years.

[Jaska]

Several disciplines (genetics, linguistics, archeology...) point to the conclusion that Basques (or Baskoid peoples) have been living near the Pyrenean area for more than 30,000 years.

Sorry, but you must exclude the linguistics: it certainly does not point to that. How it even could, methodologically?

And genetic or archaeological continuity cannot prove anything about the language; why don't you read this, too:

http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/jphakkin/Uralic.html

[Äike]

Well, I think you are wrong about the Baltic-Finnic group. It is very unlikely that they are a remnant palaeolithic group. It is more believable that they are an advancing agricultural people, like all other peoples, and thus coming from the south-east.

In the case of Latvia you are probably partly right, but I wasn´t talking about them.

To me the history of Eastern Europe is much more complex then the simplified version which has Uralic people living there and then came the Russkies.

Finnics and advancing agriculture? Those 2 terms are oxymorons.

You are seriously mislead! The priest of your cult (Wiik?) has brainwashed you. Tell me the numeral code of the gene which gives us language, please. I couldn’t find it by Google. Oh, but there isn’t any language gene, after all! Silly you. Language is learned from the surrounding humans, genes do not determine our language.

So, could you please tell me, how can you see the language from the genes? I assure you the scientists cannot see it. Your method must be revolutionary and genious…

I do not know why R1a is related with Slavs(linguistic group) and I1 with Scandinavians/Northern-Germanics(linguistic group).

The same is done here, language is tied with haplogroups:

Livonians later lived only in the Northwestern Latvia, but earlier in Northeastern Latvia – that is, as far as I can see, the sector east of Gulf of Riga, where the eastern Livonians lived between Riga and Salacgriva until recent times:

http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/ima...ope/latvia.jpg

When did Livonians live in North-Eastern Latvia?

[Comte Arnau]

Sorry, but you must exclude the linguistics: it certainly does not point to that. How it even could, methodologically?

And genetic or archaeological continuity cannot prove anything about the language; why don't you read this, too:

http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/jphakkin/Uralic.html

Nice article, but I'm not referring to Wiik's theories, neither associating language with genes nor even claiming that suppositions about the long Basque continuity in the region are true. Only that an accumulation of hints in different fields point to that.

I also know how difficult it is to prove anything old by means of language. But one thing is clear: Basque (or Baskoid) is an old language/family, and in spite of some weird theories claiming it to be Indo-European, most people agree on it being pre-IE. While it is risky to try and find etymologies for Basque (Larry Trask being an authority in it), a few roots indicate a very likely preservation of etymologies of -at least- Neolithic times. I admit, though, that via linguistics the only thing we could more or less prove is that Basque is a very old language, but not confirm it goes back to more than 10,000 years. Yet the high probability is there.

However, I don't get why genetic continuity is so disputable to you. According to this study, the presence of the rare subhaplogroup U8a brings to the conclusion that either Basques were in that region more than 30,000 years ago or they arrived from central Europe between 15,000 and 10,000 ago.

Results: We show that Basques have the most ancestral phylogeny in Europe for the rare mitochondrial subhaplogroup U8a. Divergence times situate the Basque origin of this lineage in the Upper Palaeolithic. Most probably, their primitive founders came from West Asia. The lack of U8a lineages in Africa points to an European and not a North African route of entrance. Phylogeographic analysis suggest that U8a had two expansion periods in Europe, the first, from a south-western area including the Iberian peninsula and Mediterranean France before 30,000 years ago, and the second, from Central Europe around 15,000–10,000 years ago.

Conclusion: It has been demonstrated, for the first time, that Basques show the oldest lineages in Europe for subhaplogroup U8a. Coalescence times for these lineages suggest their presence in the Basque country since the Upper Paleolithic. The European U8 phylogeography is congruent with the supposition that Basques could have participated in demographic re-expansions to repopulate central Europe in the last interglacial periods.

In my opinion, the origin of Basques in a shepperd-like pre-Neolithic Near East is more than likely. While the very old first migration could seem more logical for continuity, the second or later migration could give way to the possibility of Basque being connected to Sumerian and Alarodian (from which NE Caucasian languages might derive), a theory that some have tried to prove and that I have always found very tempting. But with such spans of time, it's obvious that we can only speculate, we are not really proving anything.

[Äike]

U8a may be old, but U5 is the oldest subclade of U.

Haplogroup U5

Among the oldest mtDNA haplogroups found in European remains of Homo sapiens is U5. The age of U5 is estimated at 50,000 but could be as old as 60,500 years. Approximately 11% of total Europeans and 10% of European-Americans are in haplogroup U5.

The presence of haplogroup U5 in Europe pre-dates the expansion of agriculture in Europe. Bryan Sykes' popular book The Seven Daughters of Eve calculated that it arose 45,000-50,000 years ago in Delphi, Greece and named the originator of haplogroup U5 Ursula. However the details related to location and age are speculative. Barbujani and Bertorelle estimate the age of haplogroup U5 as about 52,000 years ago, being the oldest subclade of haplogroup U.[11]

U5 has been found in human remains dating from the Mesolithic in England, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal and Russia.[12]

Haplogroup U5 and its subclades U5a and U5b form the highest population concentrations in the far north, in Sami, Finns, and Estonians, but it is spread widely at lower levels throughout Europe. This distribution, and the age of the haplogroup, indicate individuals from this haplogroup were part of the initial expansion tracking the retreat of ice sheets from Europe ~10kya.

Both the Basques and the Finno-Ugrics have very "old" genes, that's why I think that both the Basque language and the Finno-Ugric languages predate Indo-European languages in Europe.

[Jaska]

I do not know why R1a is related with Slavs(linguistic group) and I1 with Scandinavians/Northern-Germanics(linguistic group).
The same is done here, language is tied with haplogroups:

Actually it is not “tied”. This is called a correlation: in a certain area there is some frequent haplogroup, and some language. So there is a correlation between the two. However, this correlation has no predictive power, because language is not determined by the genes. In Finland the haplogroup N1c seems to be correlated to the Uralic language, while in the Saha republic (Yakutia) it seems to be correlated to the Turkic language and in Lithuania it seems to be correlated to the Baltic language.

There is methodologically no basis to argue, that N1c everywhere would be connected to the one and the same language (Uralic, Turkic or Baltic). Every occasion must be checked out separately, relying on the linguistic results (if we want to make conclusions about the language).

Both the Basques and the Finno-Ugrics have very "old" genes, that's why I think that both the Basque language and the Finno-Ugric languages predate Indo-European languages in Europe.

You didn’t read my link? Genetic continuity has nothing to do with the linguistic continuity. The more wide-spread the language family, the more probably archaeological and genetic continuity is correlated to the linguistic discontinuity.

When did Livonians live in North-Eastern Latvia?

The last Salaca-Livonians (east of Gulf of Riga) died or shifted their language during the 19th century. And this area is in the Northeastern Latvia, when Riga is about the centre:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livonian_people

This area was the original Livonian area, and the language spread to Courland (in Northwestern Latvia) only about 1000 AD. "Ancient Livonian" was born somewhere east of the Gulf of Riga soon after the Late Proto-Finnic phase, about at the middle of the first millennium AD.

I also know how difficult it is to prove anything old by means of language. But one thing is clear: Basque (or Baskoid) is an old language/family, and in spite of some weird theories claiming it to be Indo-European, most people agree on it being pre-IE. While it is risky to try and find etymologies for Basque (Larry Trask being an authority in it), a few roots indicate a very likely preservation of etymologies of -at least- Neolithic times. I admit, though, that via linguistics the only thing we could more or less prove is that Basque is a very old language, but not confirm it goes back to more than 10,000 years. Yet the high probability is there.

Yes, Basque (or Vasconic language family) really seems to predate the Indo-European languages in the Southwestern Europe. But as the Indo-Europeanization only occurred about 1000 BC in the Westernmost Europe, it is not necessary to consider Basque any older than, for example, Bronze Age.

This is due to the fact that no other Ancient Western European languages have survived. If they were, there would quite probably be several layers of mutual loanwords, indicating the contacts over several millennia. Or, if there were more survived Vasconic languages, we would probably reconstruct the Proto-Vasconic language as quite old.

So, I too believe that Basque was there even at the Stone Age, but the unfortunate circumstances (language without any relatives or ancient contact languages) prevent the linguistic methods to prove this.

However, I don't get why genetic continuity is so disputable to you. According to this study, the presence of the rare subhaplogroup U8a brings to the conclusion that either Basques were in that region more than 30,000 years ago or they arrived from central Europe between 15,000 and 10,000 ago.

Genetic continuity is not disputable to me – I only say that the genetic continuity cannot prove the linguistic continuity. It is all here:

http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/jphakkin/Uralic.html

I really wish that you and Lenna would read it with a thought.

[Comte Arnau]

Genetic continuity is not disputable to me – I only say that the genetic continuity cannot prove the linguistic continuity. It is all here:

http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/jphakkin/Uralic.html

I really wish that you and Lenna would read it with a thought.

I have. I do understand what you mean, and it's not the first time I've heard about Basques being much more 'recent' than usually thought. It is true that genetic continuity doesn't mean linguistic continuity at all, Pyreneans could perfectly have acquired that language later. Who knows if the Vasconic family wasn't even introduced as later as via the Cardial Culture -which would explain the link with the Iberian language- but I seriously doubt it. Frankly, we can't pretend to know all with such a long span of time, and there were probably migrations we still don't know much about.

[Motörhead Remember Me]

[QUOTE]

I wonder it they have anything to do with the Sitones mentioned by Tacitus.

Stop wondering. They are not. The Sithones may have been a people in western Finland. Or then they did not exist, because Tacitus is not really that reliable as a source.

The Baltic-Finnic languages can´t hardly be older then 2500 in the area,

Be advised that you should be thinking in Macro language groups such as Finno-ugric, Uralic, proto -Uralic, Paleo European when thinking about what languages have been spoken in the area. People may ver well be the same but languages may and do change. Even rapidly. As a comparison: Scandinavian languages are not older than 2000 years in the area either. Point is? Prior to Scandinavian and proto Scandinavian there may have been proto Germanic spoken and before that? Maybe proto-Uralic, but for sure Paleo European.

so they are not the oldest settled group in Europe.

Suggesting that cultural diffusion and language changes does not exist? Suggesting that people who were there before the Setus suddenly arrived just picked up their pots and leather pouches and left?

The oldest ethnolinguistic group in Europe is most likely the Basques (6500 years) followed by the Lithuanians and the Swedes on a shared second placed (5000 years).

Nonsense. Swedes did not exist 5000 years ago. 5000 years ago they were hunter gatherers with a culture similar to the hunter gatherers in the Fenno/Baltic region, see comb ceramic vs pitted ware cultures and ancient rock art. And they did not say "Tjenare svenne, hur e läget?" when they met in the wilderness. As an ethno linguistic group Swedes are no older than 1500 years and even then in a small tribal form around Lake Mälaren.

[Motörhead Remember Me]

Now, I was talking about the groups who has the longest continuous presence in their current location. Their is of coarse no hard evidences (writings) from this prehistoric times, but from genetics and historical patterns you can draw some conclusions.

The conclusion a bunch of people called "scientists" has drawn is that Swedes are gentically quite diverse, meaning there have been a lot of migration to Sweden which only recently have shaped the ethnolinguistic group called Swedes. The people fishing and hunting in Sweden only 2000 years ago were totally different from you in terms of self identification.

Well, I think you are wrong about the Baltic-Finnic group. It is very unlikely that they are a remnant palaeolithic group. It is more believable that they are an advancing agricultural people, like all other peoples, and thus coming from the south-east.

For Swedes, some Finns (Savolaxians)with their revolutionary slash and burn technique may seem pretty advanced agriculturalists who subdued the wilderness and settled lands where no Swede ever dared to venture, but agriculture arrived fairly late to the Baltic Finnish peoples. But you do have a point, people who need land takes posession of land therefore they push boundaries. Agriculture was the driving force which led to the populating of Fennoscandia.

To me the history of Eastern Europe is much more complex then the simplified version which has Uralic people living there and then came the Russkies

But you think the settling of Sweden is a piece of cake history?