The Resettlement of the Indo-European, Turkic, and Finno-Ugric Tribes in Eastern Europe

The Resettlement of the Indo-European, Turkic, and Finno-Ugric Tribes in Eastern Europe

Valentyn Stetsyuk, Lviv; Ukraine

Introduction to the Study of Prehistoric Ethnogenic Processes in Eastern Europe and Asia

The First Neolithic Tribes in Eastern Europe

The population of Eastern Europe still led their traditional way of life of wandering hunter-gatherers, when a number of different cultures were formed on the Balkan Peninsula and in the lower Danube in the 5thmillennium BC. Common roots of these cultures were nourished by cultural flow penetrated to the South-East Europe across the Aegean area from Anatolia.

The first farmers and herdsmen penetrated on the territory from the DniesterRiver till the Lower Don from the south-west, and partly, perhaps, from the Caucasus[1]. Actually, these newcomers were the creators of the first Neolithic cultures in Eastern Europe. During their spread in the direction to the CarpathianBasin in the 5th mill BC, when farming and pastoral tribes were first settled here, occurredgradual transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic[2].The newcomers created the culture Linear Pottery in the area of the Carpathian arc which widened on large parts of Europe and even up to France. Several interrelated Neolithic cultures belonging to the circle of this culture are known in the Middle Danube. The earliest of these, the culture Körös, was created by people of the South-Balkan origin[3].

Obviously, another group of newcomers had created the Bug-Dniester culture, which could have connection with the more advanced synchronous cultures of South-Eastern Europe. Mykola Tovkaylo said that after establishing contact with the culture of Körös in the "the outsets of productive economy i.e agriculture and livestock widened in the area of the Bug-Dniester culture"[4]. However we can also suppose that the elements of the new management had been made not only by simple contacts but with the resettlement of the population from the Balkan to the basin of the Southern Bug. Some large group of immigrants from the Balkans created here the Early-Trypillian culture. The race of the creators of the Trypillian culture can be identified by the anthropologic data which also confirm the wave of newcomers from the Balkans:

"The physical types of the people of the Tripollian culture is characterized by gracility and dolichocephaly.. Morphological features of this type are wide spread in Western Europe, Mediterranean, Asia Minor, besides special affinity with the Tripollians is shown by cranial series of Central Europe and the MediterraneanBasin"[5].

The Reconstruction of the appearance of the Trypillians confirms this fact (see Fig. 19)

Fig. 19. Graphical Reconstruction of the Appearance of the Trypillians by M.M. Gerasimov on the basis of found sculls. (MASSON V.M., MERPERT N.Ya., 1982. Fig.)

The Bug-Dniester and Early-Typillian cultures coexisted in the same area and maintained close relationships a long time from the middle of the 1stto the start of the 2nd quarter of the 4thBC"[6]. At the same time (in the 5thmill BC) Neolithic cultures spread through the South and North Caucasus to the eastern part of the Ukraine (the Dnieper-Sura and the Dnieper-Donets cultures). The spreading was occurred by as resettlement and partly by borrowing the productive economy.

One can assume that third migration stream of the carriers of Neolithic cultures existed also from Asia along the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea to the right bank of the Ural River and thence to the Lower Volga. The archaic Yelshansk Neolithic culture in the area between these rivers may be evidence for such possibility:

It is not excluded, that the territory of Central Asia was transformed into a semi-desert in connection with aridization. Living conditions deteriorated sharply, what resulted an outflow of population northward in a more favourable habitat. This area could be the Forest-steppe and the Volgaregion. Alien populations mingled with the natives and could borrow the local tradition of making stone tools"[7].

Demographic expansion of farming communities from the Southern Caucasus and Anatolia to Eastern Europe could be due to a relative overpopulation in their primary habitat, or rather by achieving so-called "maximum of economic function", which determine the border for population growth in a certain area, occurred not only in natural way but also due to the retracting of small farming communities of neighbouring groups[8].

Indo-European, Altaic, and Uralian tribes were among the communities of farmersadvancednorthward looking for new settlement places. They left their Urheimat in the 6th mill. BC and gradually reached Eastern Europe. The Indo-Europeans were moving as the first, as they had an extreme position in the home land, the Uralians and Altains moved behind them. However, before further narration, there is a need to make some adjustments. The controversialquestion of thegenetic relationship betweenTurkicwith Mongolicand Tungus-Manchu according to obtained results should be solvednegatively,since the formation ofthe properproto-languages​​took place indifferent locations.IfTurkicprotolanguagewas formed together with otherNostraticin Transcaucasia, the formation of Mongolic andTungusoccurredin the FarEast inthe AmurRiver basinalong withKorean and Japaneseparent languages​​. In addition, the relationship of the Turkic andMongolian languagesis ​​contradicted bythe lack of conclusiveword matching which may be the mostancient.For example, thenumeralsof the Turkic andMongolian languages​​have no slightest traceof similarity.Meanwhile,this layer ofvocabularywas to be oneof the oldest andthis is confirmed bythe Indo-Europeanand Finno-Ugric languages ​​in whichthe common originof numeralscan be seenquiteclearly.

Thus,the similaritiesbetween the Turkicand Mongolianlanguages​​have to be explained bythe laterprolonged contacts, obviously, the same is true forthe Tungus-Manchurian languages.Such statementdoes not givereason to doubt therelevance of Svitych Illich's data, who added to the Altaic languagealsothe factsof the Mongolianand Tungus-Manchurian, ashe mainlybased on the materialsof the Turkiclanguages​​. Linguistic factsof the Mongolianand Tungus-Manchurian languages ​​inmost cases duplicate Turkic ones. When theyhave noTurkicmatches,theyappear random, as their correspondences are scarce in otherNostraticlanguages​.The sameapplies to thefactsof languageSamoyed languages​​in relation to theFinno-Ugric peoples, however, denying theirgenetic relationshipis stillno reason, but further studyof the Uralic languages​​would be limited tothe Finno-Ugric languages​​, and the study of their relationshipwith theSamoyedshould beseparatetheme.

Forestalling something ahead in grounds, we present below the map of the settling of the Indo-European, Finno-Ugric, and Turks peoples on the Eastern European plain. The defining of areas showing ethnic settlements will be done in the following subsections.

© Valentyn Stetsyuk

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[5] KONDUKTOROVA T.S. (1973): Antropologiya naseleniya Ukrainy mezolita, neolita i epokhi bronzy. M. (In Russian) – Anthropology of the Population of the Ukraine on Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age. M. 49.

[6] TOVKAYLO M.T. (1998): Neolit stepovogo Pobuzhzhya. Avtoreferat disertatsiї na zdobuttya naukovogo stupenya kandidata istorichnikh nauk. K. – (In Ukrainian) – The Neolithic of the Steppe Country of River Bug. The Auto-Abstract of Dissertation. K. 14-15.

[7] TURETSKIY M.A., Ed. (2007): Drevnie kul’tury i etnosy Samarskogo Povolzh’ya. Samara. – (In Russian) – Ancient Cultures and Ethnoi of the Volga Samara Country. 53.

[8] ARUTIUNOV S.A.(1982): Etnicheskie obshchnosti doklassovoy epokhi. EDRO. M. – (In Russian) – Ethnic Communities of Pre-Class Period. EDRO. M: 72.