Can white people treat any indigenous people ethically? My god, it’s been the same story forever.
Daria Egereva … member of the Selkup indigenous group
She’s the only one still in jail from a widespread series of arrests of indigenous activists 6 months ago.
The Selkup speak a Uralic language of the Samoyedic branch. We’re most familiar with the Finno-Ugric branch of Uralic - Finnish, Estonian & Hungarian - the largest non-Indo-European languages in Europe. The homeland of Uralic languages is in Siberia though, where there is a rich diversity of Uralic languages. Uralic languages probably expanded with master bronze-crafters associated with Seima-Turbino complex of bronze weapons, a style we see from China to Finland.
The first wave of Russia’s eastward expansion, and then especially Stalinism were devastating to the stunning linguistic and cultural diversity of Siberia. Uralic, Turkic, Tungusic (related to northern China’s Manchu of Qing Dynasty fame), even Eskimo languages, plus the fascinating wealth of Paleo-Siberian languages - completely unrelated language families like Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Nivkh, Yukaghir, and the fascinating Yeneseian, which has influenced almost all the others, is preserved in ancient chinese sources and is now a single language with maybe 10-100 speakers. Oh and it’s almost certainly a distant relative of Navajo! For real!
19thC imperialism and then Stalin’s Russianization policies left most of these languages extinct, moribund or critically endangered. There is a good chance that Putin’s policies will snuff out most of what’s left.
Great comment. Thank you for taking the time to write it.
Great and informative comment. I’m far from an expert in the subject but it was my understanding a current theory is that the language “comes” from Siberia, but that it is not completely accepted. Am I wrong?
Wait which language? The Urheimat of Uralic languages definitely looks to be the ural mountains region that is taken as the western edge of siberia. As with genetics, the area of greatest diversity is almost always the origin point. That doesn’t always hold, and mountains tend to preserve diversity, but it’s definitely the only strong contender.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to be unclear. My comment formed in the beginning of the original comment. I was regering to Finno-Ugric.
Oh! Yeah finno-ugric as a seperate branch probably developed west of siberia.
But rooted I Siberia or not. Related to Korean or not. Now I’m just curious about your oppinon. :)
Ok, firstly i’m not a linguist, or any other kind of expert. I’m an enthusiast, I have an ancient history degree and my parents are linguists. I would also love to hear your take on these questions! :)
Related to Korean - i think the only honest answer is “there’s insufficient evidence to claim that”. But i do think it’s possible. Like a lot of long-ranger theories it’s like - yeah maybe, but if so further back in time than the comparative method can go. The seimo-turbino related connection to korea is pretty well disproved i believe - the weapons are later and different enough that it’s almost certainly much later chinese iterations moving into korea.
But i vaguely remember hearing some ancient dna stuff that suggested links. But siberia like the wider steppe seems to be such a soupy interaction zone, i dunno if there’ll ever be evidence enough to puzzle out what’s areal and what’s genetic (linguistically) with certainty.
As for rooted in siberia, i could believe that there were pre-proto-finno-ugric communities west of the urals who expanded further west in the early bronze age - population expansion likely occurs sometime before linguistic differentiation, right? Since Proto-FU seems younger than Samoyedic it seems likely to me that FU ultimately stems from siberia, even if it developed as a seperate branch west of the urals.
What’s your understanding though, what do you think about it?
Another day of propaganda from TheGuardian. Where is the journalism?
For you? RT, I’m guessing.
