34 years ago, Miguel Civil in his article "From Enki's headache to phonology" showed that late Sumerian ugu, "top of the head," is the same word as earlier a-g�; and from the alternation of a-g� with the divine name dab-�, he concluded that it probably originally contained a labiovelar stop in the middle (Fig. 6). Recently, Joan Westenholz and Marcel Sigrist have shown that beside "top of the head," ugu also means "brain." { Hungarian agy=brain} �Both formally and semantically, the Sumerian word thus matches the Uralic word *ajkwo "brain, top of the head," which can be reconstructed as containing a labiovelar stop in the middle based on its reflexes in individual Uralic languages. Remarkably, Sumerian ugu4 "to give birth," a homophone of ugu, likewise has a close counterpart in Finnic aiko-, aivo-, "to intend; to give birth." The semantics of the Finnic word show that it derives from the word for "brain," and the alternation of /k/ and /v/ in the stem confirms the reconstruction of the labiovelar in the middle of the word.
Several other words discussed by Civil also display an alternation of /g/ and /b/, including gurux or buru4 "crow," and gur(u)21 "shield," also attested as kuru14, e-bu-�r and �b-ba-ru (Fig. 7). These two words certainly were almost homophonous, since they could be written with the same logogram. The common Uralic word for "crow," *kwar�ks, indeed contains the posited labiovelar stop and provides a perfect etymology for the Sumerian word. The original labiovelar is preserved in Selkup, but has been replaced by /v/ in other Uralic languages except Sayan Samoyed, where it is appears as /b/. Sumerian gur(u)21 "shield" can be compared with Finnic varus "protection," whose original form can be reconstructed as *kwaruks and thus provides a perfect etymology for the Sumerian word. ��{?Hungarian �v=to protect from harm, v�r=a fort}
The regular replacement of the labiovelar by /g/, /k/ or /b/ in Sumerian and by /v/ in Uralic amounts to a phonological rule and helps establish further connections between Sumerian and Uralic words displaying a similar correlation, for example Sumerian g�d "to pull" and Uralic *vet�- "to pull," {Hungarian huz t>z} and Sumerian kur "mountain" and Uralic *vor "mountain." {also common as kur in many FU languages} �The reconstruction of an original labiovelar in the latter case is strongly supported by Volgaic kurok, "mountain." The phonological correspondences between Sumerian and Uralic remain to be fully charted, but a great many of them certainly are perfectly regular. For example, in word initial position Sumerian /�/ regularly corresponds to Finnic /h/, while Sumerian /s/ regularly corresponds to Finnic /s/ (Fig. . �{In Hungarian its often s, ch, sh }
The word a-g� just discussed was written syllabically with two cuneiform signs, A and KA, both of which have several phonetic values and meanings based on homophony and idea association (Fig. 9). All these phonetic values and meanings have close counterparts in Uralic, and the homophonic and semantic associations between the individual meanings work in Uralic, too; compare the homophony between a, aj "water" and aj, aja "father" in Sumerian, and j��, j�j and �j, �ij� in Uralic. And this applies not only to the signs A and KA but, unbelievable as it may sound, practically the whole Sumerian syllabary. Consider, for example, the sign AN (Fig. 10), whose basic meaning, "heaven, highest god," was in Old Sumerian homophonous with the third person singular of the verb "to be," am6. The Uralic word for "heaven" and "highest god" was *joma, which likewise was virtually homophonous with the third person singular of the verb "to be," *oma. These two words would have become totally homophonous in Sumerian after the loss of the initial /j/. The loss of the initial /j/ also provided the homophony between Sumerian a "water" and aj "father" just mentioned.
Such a close and systematic parallelism in form and meaning is possible only in languages related to each other. Accordingly, the logical conclusion is that Sumerian is a Uralic language. This conclusion is backed up by the great number of common words and the regularity of the phonological correspondences between Sumerian and Uralic already discussed, as well as by many other considerations. Sumerian displays the basic typological features of Uralic; it has vowel harmony, no grammatical gender but an opposition between animate and inanimate, and its grammatical system is clearly Uralic, with similar pronouns, case markers, and personal endings of the verb. In addition, many Uralic derivational morphemes can be identified in Sumerian nouns and verbs. The non-Uralic features of Sumerian, such as the ergative construction and the prefix chains of the verb, can be explained as special developments of Sumerian in an entirely new linguistic environment after its separation from the other Uralic languages.
The Sumerians thus came to Mesopotamia from the north, where the Uralic language family is located (Fig. 11), and by studying the lexical evidence and the grammatical features which Sumerian shares with individual Uralic languages, it is possible to make additional inferences about their origins. The closest affinities of Sumerian within the Uralic family are with the Volgaic and Finnic languages, particularly the latter, with which it shares a number of significant phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses. The latter include, among other things, a common word for "sea, ocean" (Sumerian ab or a-ab-ba, Finnic aava, aappa), and common words for cereals, sowing and harvesting, domestic animals, wheeled vehicles, and the harness of draught animals (Fig. 12). A number of these words also have counterparts in Indo-European, particularly Germanic languages. These data taken together suggest that the Sumerians originated in the Pontic-Caspian region between the mouth of the Volga and the Black Sea, north of the Caucasus Mountains, where they had been living a sedentary life in contact with Indo-European tribes. I would not exclude the possibility that their homeland is to be identified with the Majkop culture of the North Caucasus, which flourished between 3700 and 2900 BC and had trade contacts with the late Uruk culture (Fig. 13). Placing the Sumerian homeland in this area would help explain the non-Uralic features of Sumerian, for the Kartvelian languages spoken just south of it are ergative and have a system of verbal prefixes resembling the Sumerian one. The Sumerian words for wheel and the harness of draft animals that it shares with Uralic show that its separation from Uralic took place after the invention of wheeled vehicles, which were known in the Majkop culture since about 3500 BC.
About 3500 BC, the Indo-European Yamnaya culture that had emerged between the Danube and the Don began to expand dynamically to the east, reaching the Caucasian foreland by about 3300 BC. This expansion is likely to have triggered the Sumerian migration to Mesopotamia. It would have proceeded through the Caucasus and the Diyala Valley, and since wheeled transport was available, could easily have been completed before the end of the Late Uruk period (c. 3100 BC). The arrival of the Sumerians would thus coincide with the destruction of the Eanna temple precinct at the end of the Uruk IVa period.
The lexical parallels between Sumerian and Uralic thus open up not only completely new possibilities for the study of Sumerian, but also a chance to identify the original homeland of the Sumerians and date their arrival in Mesopotamia. In addition, they provide a medium through which it becomes possible to penetrate into the prehistory of the Finno-Ugric peoples with the help of very ancient linguistic data. Of course, it is clear that the relevant evidence must first pass the test of verification or falsification before any part of it can be generally accepted and exploited.
I am currently preparing an Internet version of the database in collaboration with the Department of General Linguistics of the University of Helsinki. This web version is planned to be interactive and will contain a search engine and a program to check the regularity of the sound changes involved in the comparisons. I heartily invite all sceptics to visit the site once it is ready and falsify as many of the comparisons as they can, and everybody else to look at the evidence, check it out, and contribute to it by constructive criticism and new data.
sourcehttp://www.posavski-vremeplov.com/zapisi-o-zemlji/od-pradomovine-do-domovine/
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Originally Posted by Gospodine
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