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Genetics: The Finno-Ugric connection
The Finno-Ugric connection, genetics-wise, could be bigger than imagined
Author: Jukka Rislakki in Tallinn
Filed: 26/12/2002, 11:11:26
Source: Helsingin Sanomat
Readers' Comments: (0)
Foreign - Tuesday 30.1.2001
Even the Balts are relatives, despite their language
The latest genetics research indicates that we Finns have a great many "relatives" out there in Eastern Europe and Siberia, and that these peoples share a common ancestor who was apparently Finno-Ugric in origin. At the same time, it would seem that the Estonians are genetically closer to their Latvian neighbours than they are to their linguistic relatives the Finns.
All the "ancient East Europeans" - the group does not include the Slavic tribes, who only turned up around 1400 years ago - have a 40 to 50% incidence of a common paternal genetic inheritance, in other words a unique male Y-chromosome polymorph, according to the Estonian academician and professor of evolutionary biology Richard Villems.
The ancient East European races in this context refers to the Balts, the Finns, the Sámi peoples of Lapland, and other races related to the Finno-Ugric stock.
Man emerged originally from Africa, but it is possible that the "Adam" of East European man, or at least one of the Adams, was a Finno-Ugrian, says Villems. In addition to his duties at the University of Tartu, the 56-year-old Villems is Director of the Estonian Biocentre.
"Although the Balts (the Latvians and Lithuanians) each speak an Indo-European language, unlike us Finno-Ugrians, they exhibit this chromosome pattern roughly as often as do the Finns, the Karelians, the Estonians, the Sámi, and other Finno-Ugrian groups", Villems argues.
In this respect the Balts differ from other Indo-Europeans, whether they may speak Slavic, Germanic, or Romance languages.
The remainder of the paternal line comes from the West. On the maternal side, our genetic history ties us inextricably with the Western Europeans. Estonians have only 0.5% Mongol lineage and the Finns around 1%, with the Sámi showing a slightly larger incidence.
The peculiar Y chromosomal DNA variant, known as Tat C, is also dominant in almost all the indigenous peoples of Siberia, from the nomadic Yakuts right across to the Chukchis and Siberian Inuits living on the shores of the Bering Strait - regardless of what language they may communicate in.
According to Prof. Villems, the "point" in all this is that among the Finno-Ugric races of Europe this genetic inheritance is much more diverse, more multibranched, and hence apparently older than among any of the Siberian peoples.
It is characteristic of the European Finno-Ugrians both in the area of the Baltic Sea and in the Volga region (the ethnic Maris living in the Mari Republic east of Nizhni-Novgorod and west of the Urals). "It is an original Finn-Ugric feature. We have observance of between 35 and 60%, or about half of the paternal inheritance, and it has penetrated to some extent into Norway and rather less to Sweden."
The figures for Poles, Slovaks, and Hungarians are already very very small, however, and in Western and Mediterranean Europe they go right down to zero."
Researchers at Oxford also spotted the spread of this "Northern Gene" three years ago. Villems shrugs his shoulders, "But they simply accepted the old theory: they believed it confirmed the idea that the Finno-Ugric tribes originated from Siberia."
Villems asserts that the contrary is true, however: the movement was one from west to east and not westwards from Siberia. He argues that the genetic variant could have been transported for instance by warriors. "And at the same time they could possibly have carried the proto Finno-Ugric language with them".
The same gene morphism has been found from the Inuits of Greenland. On seeing how this mutation has spread right the way across the northern parts of the Northern Hemisphere and nowhere else, the professor has started to wonder if we might be dealing with a gene that somehow helps us to acclimatise ourselves - to withstand extreme cold.
He also believes that our Finno-Ugrian ancestors might well have been living here a good while before the last Ice Age (around 20,000 years ago). "They could perhaps have arrived even at the same sort of time as the first great wave of migration as man spread into Europe some 40,000 years ago."
There were people living the whole time along the southern fringes of the continental ice mass. When the ice sheets were was at their most extensive, the Finno-Ugric tribe would have lived for some time down in the region between the Don and Dniester rivers, in what is now part of the Ukraine. Radio carbon dating studies show that this area was more densely settled during the Ice Age than it was either before or afterwards.
Professor Villems sides with those scholars of linguistics who claim that the original Finno-Ugric tongue was spoken widely through Northern Europe - in Fenno-Scandia and the Baltic region all the way down to the German coast. "This fits the picture very well."
Languages change immeasurably more quickly than do features of genetic inheritance. Villems regards it as a given that our common genetic identity emerged well before the Indo-European language that is spoken by the Latvians and the Lithuanians.
More advanced grain cultivating cultures and the Indo-Eurtopean language strain gradually penetrated into the north. They never made it up to the coldest areas. The language boundary remained where it is today: between Estonia and Latvia.
But the gene frontier would have none of this. "One could say that the Estonians are genetically a shade closer to the Karelians and to the Latvians - at least to the northern Latvians - than they are to the Finns, from whom they are divided by the Gulf of Finland. In this way the Estonians also have a tad more of the Central European about them."
Amongst the Latvians one can of course also see the influence of the Livonian Knights (the crusading order that conquered and converted this area in the 13th century). But what is perhaps most bizarre of all is that even the Lithuanians have much the same frequency of occurrence of that Y chromosome as do the Estonians and the Finns.
"Just across the border in Poland, however, it disappears abruptly. There's a very striking genetic frontier there, in spite of the fact that the two nations are neighbours with nothing much in the way of rivers or mountain ranges to prevent access either way, and they have even lived under the same rulers for centuries!"
The same paradox exists to the south-east: the Balts and the Belarussians have a similar genetic wall between them, and the frequency of the Y chromosome mutation in Belarus is very low.
"This sort of thing gets one thinking about how people behaved. Apparently the societies were very clearly separated. I mean, the gene would have travelled in a flash if the soldiers from one group had raped the women of another, for instance."
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 24.1.2001
Translator's Note: The expressions Finno-Ugrian and Finno-Ugric (Ugro-Finnic is also found occasionally) are used here mainly in the genetic context. However, a word is perhaps necessary on the other application of the terms, that is in connection with language. Contrary to the beliefs of many foreigners, Finnish is not a language related to the other Scandinavian tongues - indeed it is not an Indo-European language at all.
The Finno-Ugric language group is a subfamily of the Uralic languages, and is spoken by between 20-25 million inhabitants of Northern Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and N.W.Asia. It is one of two such subfamilies, the other being the Samoyed languages spoken in N.W. Siberia.
The Finno-Ugric subfamily is usually further divided into two largish branches: Finnic (sometimes called Finno-Permian) and Ugric. Finnic contains two major languages, Finnish and Estonian. Ugric contains the Hungarian language (also called Magyar), spoken in Hungary and by Hungarians living in neighbouring countries.
In later times, the Finnic languages added words from Germanic and Slavic (particularly Russian) languages. Hungarian was influenced by German, Latin, Italian, Slavic, and Turkish. There is a great deal of heterogeneity among the modern Finno-Ugric languages, and virtually no feature is common to the whole group. Estonians and Finns can just about make themselves understood, with sometimes amusing vocabulary differences, but the connection between Hungarian and Finnish is apparent more to the scholar than to the layman who visits the capital city of the other language.
It may seem absurd (at least considering the size and relative "usefulness" of the language), but Finnish is quite a popular subject among linguistics students in Europe, since degree courses often require the study of at least one non Indo-European language, and Finnish fits the bill without the obstacle of needing to learn a radically different alphabet. Not that this means it is easy, mind you! WLM
www.helsinki-hs.net/news.asp?id=20010130IE4
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