Origins of Finns and Saami

Genetic and linguistic researchers have already almost solved the origin of Finns and Saami.

M. Myllylä’s autosomal DNA plot [5] (see [4] for explanations, the gif-picture of [5] shows quite well with a browser and by opening two browsers one can compare the admixture dimensions, names of ethnicities are at the bottom) show that genetically Fenno-Ugrian people form groups, which to an expected extent fit to linguistic divisions.

Finns are very naturally closest related to Estonians and both of them are very close to the other Baltic Finnic people. These Baltic Finnic people Veps, PaganiFinns, Karelians and Ingrians are genetically almost identical while Finns and Estonians have some Baltic mixture Russians living in areas formerly occupied by Baltic Finnic people (RussPI in Myllylä’s plot) are nearly identical with this latter group.

Saami are somewhat similar, but not very closely related to Finns. They are nearly identical to Mari and very similar to Udmurt and Chuvash. Saami and Mansi are related, but more distantly. Mari and Udmurt are Volga Finnic people. Chuvash must have originally been Volga Finnic, but has changed language to Turkic. The third group of Volga Finnic languages, Mordvian, is spoken by the people of Moksha and Erzya. These people are genetically more distant from Finnic peoples and genetically very similar to Latvians. Mordvians may have changed language to Fenno-Ugrian from a Baltic language similar to Latvian, or maybe Latvians have changed the language during the Corded Ware.

Ugric people: Komi, Khanty, Mansi, are more distantly related to Finns and Saami.

Finnic people typically have high levels of Y-DNA haplogroup N1c. The phylogenic tree for Y-DNA haplogroup N1c shows that in Finland there are two branches of N1c1: Baltic Finnish (L550) and Karelian (Z1934). G. Dunlek’s picture has marked separation times:

while the Eupedia picture has named cultures:

Both branches of N1c are under L392/L1026, which is identified in the Eupedia picture as Comb Ceramics. Today it is no longer generally accepted that Comb Ceramic culture was Fenno-Ugric. It first appeared in the Korean Peninsula over 8,000 years ago and though Y-DNA hg. N is present at the sites, the language probably was not Fenno-Urgic. Today it is estimated that the Fenno-Ugric language group is 4,000-6,000 years old, but naturally it developed from something and there may be very old similarities between this language group and some East Asian languages, like Korean. I my opinion, it is still very possible that the language of the European Comb Ceramics developed later to Fenno-Ugric since the connection with N1c seems strong for both.

Finns appear in many branches of the tree. The most common Finnish N1c-type is N-Z1933, which appears in the lower left in the Eupedia picture and is denoted as Karelian and Savonian in Dunkel’s picture. The type appears in the whole country and also in Estonia, so it is not restricted to Karelia and Savo. The modern name of this Karelian subtype is N3a4-VL62. It is also common in Saami. VL62 is seen in the lower left corner in the Eupedia plot.

According to [3] both Saamis and Finns also have N3a3-VL29. N3a3 is a new name for the other branch of N1c and it can be found from the Eupedia picture as CTS2929/V29 and it is named Nordic & Baltic branch. I found the following frequencies of N3a3 from a web discussion: Saami 6/13, Finns 5/21, Karelians 21/52, Arhangel Russians 14/47, Estonians 65/72, Maris 6/21, Nenets 6/39. Thus, it is not completely correct to say that the branches titled Finns (N3a4-V29 or L550) and Karelians/Savonians (N3a4-VL62 or Z1933) were separate as people, but to me it seems that at some time they were separate.

In the Eupedia picture these branches separates around 2300-1500 BCE. The Ugric branch splits from Z1936, when the branch leading to L550 already had separated. Likewise, Komi, Chukchi and Buryat Turks are mentioned in only one branch. Additionally, the frequencies of N3a3 and N3a4 are different for different peoples. These facts can only be understood in the way that the branch leading to Z1933 had been carried by a different people than the branch leading to L550, and only later smaller migrations carried both branches both to the Baltic region and to Karelia.

Finns moved to Baltic probably after the Corded Ware culture. In Estonia Corded Ware pottery disappears 2000/1900 BC. Next 800 years shows no pottery. This may mean that the Corded Ware people shifted back to hunting and gathering as the climate did not favor cattle herding. New and different pottery appears 1200/1100 BC. This may be the time Finns arrived to Estonia. At the same time Germanic people with Y-DNA haplogroup I1 arrive to Scandinavia from Central Europe. They were sea faring people and probably had sheep. These Germanic people also move to Western Finland and probably were the origin of I1 people in Satakunta and after mixing with N1c (Finns) people formed the core of the Häme tribe.

There were aboriginal people in Baltic countries. They were descendants of the mixture of original Western hunter-gatherers (HWG), who belonged to Y-DNA haplogroup I2a, and Corded Ware people, who belonged to Y-DNA haplogroup R1a and had come to Baltic around 2,500 BC. As the Corded Ware people were on a higher cultural level having domestic animals and practicing agriculture or animal herding, their women did not take hunter-gatherer men, but their men took hunter-gatherer women. Thus it is understandable that Y-DNA hg. I2a disappeared when hunter-gatherers died out, but mtDNA hg. U5 survived.

The descendants of the Corded Ware people were on a cultural lower level than the arriving Germanic and Finnic tribes. The new comers took wives from the aboriginal population, but Y-DNA hg. R1a was largely replaced by I1 and N1c. This may be reflected by the etymology of the word slave in both Germanic and Finnic languages: the Germanic slave refers to Slavs, carriers of Y-DNA R1a, while the Finnic word for slave is orja, which comes from Aryan, the Corded Ware people, carriers of Y-DNA R1a. The aborigines were enslaved at some point, but their genes were mixed with those of the new comers. In the Roman Iron Age, 500 BC-500 AD, Finns moved across the Gulf of Finland and pushed the Lapps further to the north. Finns have the same mtDNA U5b as Balts, but the U5b of Finns and Saami separated around 6,000 ybp. It means that Finns did not take many wives from Saami.

In the Roman Iron Age and even later there were living Lapps in Lakeland-Finland, that is, the inside of the country. These Lapps were talking Proto-Saame, see [1], which already was a different language from Proto-Finnish. It is a question whether these Lapps were Saami or not.

On linguistic grounds Ante Aikio [1] proposes more or less the following:

1. Proto-Saami languages were spoken by in Lakeland-Finland before Finnish shown by Saami place names. Finnish replaced Saami in the Middle Ages (500-1500 AD).
2. The ancestors of Saami people spoke a non-Uralic and non-Indo-European language before the Roman Iron Age because there is such a substrate in present Saami languages. This substrate shows that the ancestors of Saami hunted reindeers, they did not herd them. (Indeed, Saami started herding reindeers in the Middle Ages, they learned to domesticate reindeers from Ugric people in northern Siberia.)
3. The people speaking Saami languages in Lakeland-Finland, called Lapps, were ethnically different from Finns. They are referred to as other.

Aikio does not say clearly if the Lapps of Lakeland-Finland were ethnically the same people as present day Saami, but states that they were not Finns and more or less implies that they were Saami. The study does not use genetic data and only on linguistic data the question of ethnicity cannot be answered.

All three points are well justified in [1], but I do not think that the ancestors of the present Saami were the original reindeer hunters of the Fenno-Scandian North. Saami are in autosomal genes so close to Volga Finns that they must have moved to inland Finland from the Volga region later than Finns moved to the Baltic. The simplest solution is that the Lapps of Lakeland-Finland were a Volga Finnic people, who carried the Y-DNA hg. N1c-Z1934, and they were ancestors of the present Saami.

This branch has the sub-branch Z1933, which is found from Finnish Karelians and Savonians, confirming that Savo was populated by Karelians in the Middle Ages, but this sub-branch was not formed in the Lapps of Lakeland-Finland. It was formed in mixed Finnish population, probably around Ladoga. Thus, Karelians and Savonians were not Saami. They were an admixture of Finns, Balts and this N1c-Z1933 people from originally from Volga.

Z1933 created a founder effect about 2000 years ago and become the most common N1c-type of Finns. Before that time there was another founder effect of a predecessor of this blanch, Z1936, around 1000 BC. The Lapps of Lakeland-Finland were in my opinion descendants of Z1936 and ancestors of Saami. They were pushed to the North after the Finns started moving to inland Finland around 2000 years ago, which corresponds to the Z1933 founder effect. In the North Lapps shifted from hunting to reindeer herding and had a small genetic contribution from Siberia, probably reindeer keepers.

There was an original reindeer hunting population in Finland and Scandinavia. It spoke non-Uralic and non-Indo-European languages, but it disappeared. Mainly female lineages survived in Corded Ware and through them in Baltic people. Both Baltic-Finnic and Volga Finnic people mixed with Baltic and aboriginal people and obtained these genes, the same was true with Germanic peoples.

Before the Corded Ware there was the Comb Ceramic culture. Around 2000–1500/1300 BC Comb Ceramics people mixed with Corded Ware invaders creating the culture of Kiukainen. This culture has been found in the Finnish sea shore from Vyborg to Kvarken. It is too early for the Z1933 and Z1936 founding effects, but probably it was during this culture that Z1936 mixed into the L550 branch. The first Scandinavians arrived to Finland around 1500 BC. In 700-500 BC several waves of people left Volga and Kama rivers and moved to Fennoscandia.

So, this was my version of the story of the origins of Finns and Saami. There is a more professional one in [2] by Valter Lang, but it also is only a story. In these (his)story fields nothing is completely proven, everything is only stories.

In my story one may ask why Mari’s have N3a4-VL29 and why Saami have roughly equal amounts of N3a3-V62 and N3a4-VL29. Probably one cannot find a complete answer before there is ancient DNA from early Finns and Saami and that does not seem to be coming.

The complete phylogenic tree of N1c for doing more similar speculations is here:

https://www.yfull.com/tree/N/¨

I have no wish to explore the scientific study of this topic deeper having no competence on genetics or linguistics, but logical thinking on the basis of other people’s research can always be done. There is one interesting question that always puzzled me and possibly can be now answered.

Is Kalevi Wiik’s theory vindicated or discredited?

Kalevi Wiik (died 2015) was professor of phenology, so not so far from acceptable research fields for tacking this problem, unlike me. Yet, his theory has been announced as discredited, but is it really so?

To some extent the answer is yes: Wiik maintained that Finns did not move to Finland from anywhere based on the lack of archeological evidence that shows mass migrations. My version of the story is more similar to the one I learned in the school. Finns did move in to the Baltic region, maybe around 1200 BC, or maybe even a bit earlier, and to Finland in the Roman Iron Age. There were different Finnish tribes: Finns, Häme tribe, Karelians with somewhat different genetics. Saami lived in inland Finland and was pushed to Lapland.

Yet, in some way Wiik is vindicated: Finns and Baltic people have the largest genetic contribution from the Western Hunter Gatherers (WHG), so they mixed with locals, and did not mix with Anatolian farmers. Indo-Europeans derive from Yamnaya and through them in one third from the Eastern Hunter Gatherers (EHG). As EHG partially derives from Ancient North Eurasian (ANE), Indo-Europeans are genetically not more western than Finns and Balts. (There is also Yamnaya and EHG admixture in Finns and Balts.)

Another thesis by Wiik was about language shifts. He maintained that Finnish was at one time lingua franca and Germanic people shifted their language from Finnish to German. This thesis, as it was stated, has not gained much popularity, but langue shifts can easily be shown by autosomal DNA. Thus, in Myllylä’s plots, RussiaPI and Chuvash have originally been Fenno-Ugric and either Mordvins or Balts have changed their language. Some Germanics have changed their language; that is clear as Germany is not genetically uniform, but probably not from a Fenno-Ugrian language.

Yet another thesis by Wiik was that Finns spent the Ice Age in the Ukrainan refuge. This thesis is also discredited since Fenno-Urgian language is not so old to have relevance in the Ice Age, but WHGs did spend the Ice Age in refugees and blond skin color indeed seems to have come from Eastern Hunter Gatherets, not from the Middle East, as once was claimed. The Western Hunter Gatherers had blue eyes and dark skin, while the EHGs had variable eye color and lighter skin. This lighter skin spread from EHGs to Scandinavian Hunter Gatherers, who then were a mixture of WHGs and EHGs. They were the aboriginal population that met the Corded Ware people and created Balts. Finns mixed with these people, as did Germanics, so Nordic blond genes are not mainly from Yamnaya Indo-Europeans, or from Anatolian farmers, but apparently from Scandinavian Hunter Gatherers.

Genetic studies seem to be converging to a solution that explains the problems that originally created European scientific racism in the 19^th century. At that time European linguistics noticed that Indo-European languages have spread almost everywhere in Europe and also to India. An Indo-European homeland somewhere in Central Asia was proposed. The people were imagined as a blue eyed, blond skinned, tall stature master race, who had invented most of the high culture.

Now it turns out that agriculture and domestication of sheep, goat, pig and cattle was done by G2 men in the north of the Fertile Crescent around 10,000-7.500 BC and G2a men brought these innovations to Europe. Still, tree agriculture is probably older: while in the Jordan valley fig trees were planted around 9,500 BC, but the “forest” of New-Guinea is actually tree cultivations and those people moved there already 60,000 ybp. In Mexico squash cultivation started around 8,000 BC, so around the same time as agriculture started in the Fertile Crescent. Probably humans were aware of this possibility long before, but did not shift to agriculture as long as hunting and gathering gave a better living.

The Mesolithic I2 men of Europe were also very innovative creating the first rock painting and figurative art, and these innovations spread quite early to other parts of the world, or they were independently invented in many places. Indeed, it may yet turn out that humans have a longer history and have been doing these things for a much longer time, so humans everywhere have had the capability of inventing things for a very long time.

There was a master race, the R1b Indo-Europeans. They spread to Europe from the Yamna culture and replaced old male lineages I2 and G2a from most of Europe. G2a remained common only in some mountainous regions and I2 in Dinaric Alps – though in small frequencies they can be found in many places in Europe. There were more men than women in these Indo-European invasions, so they were war parties of people with horses, carriages and cattle. This master race was not Nordic blond and brown eyed, but got the blond eyes form local women.

The second wave of Indo-Europeans brought R1a. They were another master race, the Battle Axe culture, also called the Corded Ware. These people were also in Iran and from there spread to India. There were some G2a with them, so Indian higher casts have some G2a. The languages of R1a people include Baltic, Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages, so it was a large group. They had horses, cattle and bronze age weapons.

One master race in Europe was J2a men. This Y-DNA haplogroup was born in Turkey quite early, 15,000-20,000 ybp, but they are mostly remembered as Greeks and Phoenicians. They were not the first Greeks: the civilization of Crete was created by G2a.

The blond Nordics I1 men first appeared in Central Europe around 2,000 BC and moved to Northern Europe. They are associated with bronze age weapons and sea faring.  Later they were Vikings, also a kind of a master race. As Swedes have the highest frequency of lactose tolerance, these people must have had sheep, goats or cattle.

Clearly, there were many master races in Europe in different times, some blonder and some darker. Male lineages disappeared, while female lineages often survived. Cultures can be higher and lower, i.e., hunter-gatherer culture is older than that of agriculturalists and pastoral nomads. Hunting and gathering can support fewer people and such cultures will be replaced by more advanced invaders. In the global scale there can also be cognitive differences between peoples, but in the European theater all peoples were on the same cognitive level. There was a simple moral: those with more advanced economy and weapons pushed out the weaker ones. Does it also follow that this shift should happen? Probably it is so. It is not possible to stay in an outdated mode of living, but most people can make this change. What one can see is that there were no God’s promised peoples: once one people had the upper hand, another time another. Both Finns and Saami also had their golden times, unfortunately those times already passed.

References:

[1] Ante Aikio, An Essay on Saami Ethnolinguistic Prehistory, 2012,https://www.academia.edu/4811760/An_Essay_on_Saami_Ethnolinguistic_Prehistory

[2] Valter Lang, Formation of Proto-Finnic – an archaeological scenario from the

Bronze Age / Early Iron Age, 63-86, 2015,

http://www.oulu.fi/sites/default/files/content/CIFU12-PlenaryPapers.pdf

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5005449/

[4] http://terheninenmaa.blogspot.com/2016/10/worldwide-admixture-analysis-based-on.html

[5] http://www.elisanet.fi/mauri_my/kaikki13valmis.gif