About the estimates of divergence times of Uralic languages

[Balazs Csurgai]

   Hi! Some summary on that topic can be seen in e.g.: Juha Janhunen: Proto-Uralic—what, where, and when? in: Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne 258http://www.sgr.fi/sust/sust258/sust258.htmlhttp://www.sgr.fi/sust/sust258/sust258_janhunen.pdf The "classic" time-depth of the Uralic/FU pops is occasionally questioned, i.e. it's too deep, etc., but in my personal opinion the valid time is rather even deeper than younger. The approach of that article is conservative, i.e. it mainly treats the issue from the classical viewpoints and methods (i.e. linguistics, archaeology, etc.), which are, of course, still needed and adequate, but in recent times, with the emergence of new disciplines, like archaeo- and population-genetics, the results of these fields must be also taken into consideration when one's addressing these types of questions. I addressed the topic partly in one of my previous posts, regarding the Uralic/Finno-Ugric population genetics, in my article: Xiongnu Genetics, 2010.http://chronica.freebase.hu/huns/xionggen.htm The most significant haplogroup in the case of those mentioned Uralic/FU subpopulations is the Y-DNA N, also one of its subgroups: N1c (N3-Tat), what's presence (in Eurasia) is considered to reflect an ancient Uralic/Finno-Ugrian speaking population (now mainly substratum). There are some differences yet in the opinions concerning the place of the origin and the dating of that ancestral population: one candidate is present-day Mongolia, the other is somewhere in Northern-Eurasia, and the dating goes from around 2000 BC onward (or backwards). For definite timing what is presently known: the conserned haplogroup was present in Mongolia 2300 years ago, among a Xiongnu tribal population, and the next occurence was found among a Hungarian population of Hungary of the 10th century AD. For starting point to these and the like, I suggest the following articles (besides the above summary article of mine which lists more connected literature too), which are treating the questions of place, time-depth and some general FU population history and ethnogenesis, etc.: Does the Tat polymorphism originate in northern Mongolia?, C. Keyser-Tracqui et al. 2004, in: International Congress Series,1261, April 2004. Y-chromosome haplogroup N dispersals from south Siberia to Europe, Derenko et al. 2007,in: Journal of Human Genetics 52, September 2007. A counter-clockwise northern route of the Y-chromosome haplogroup N from Southeast Asia towards Europe, Rootsi et al., in: European Journal of Human Genetics15,2007.http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v15/n2/full/5201748a.html Gene pool differences between northern and southern Altaians inferred from the data on Y-chromosomal haplogroups. in: Genetika 2007 May. Migration Waves to the Baltic Sea Region, Lappalainen, 2008, in: Annals of Human Genetics Volume 72, Issue 3,May 2008.http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-1809.2007.00429.x/fullRegards Balázs Hungary, sep 2010.  -- Eredeti üzenet --Feladó: Terhi Honkola <terhi.honkola at utu.fi> Címzett: ura-list at helsinki.fi Elküldve: 2010. szeptember 28. 13:2 Tárgy : About the estimates of divergence times of Uralic languages Hello everyone,I´m a PhD student in a research group called BEDLAN (Biological Evolution and the Diversification of Languages) where we analyse linguistic data with biological methods. For further information see http://kielievoluutio.uta.fi.The reason why I approach to you, the members of URA-LIST, now is that I have done lately timing analyses to the Uralic languages. An essential part in those analyses is the correct estimation of the calibration points. I have already gone through different sources (i.e. Sinor 1988, Abondolo 1998, Kallio 2006) where divergence times of languages have earlier been estimated and by now I have used the following calibration points:*Early Proto-Finnic: 2500 YBP (years before present) ± 500 years*Obugric 1700 YBP ± 200 years*Permic 1300 YBP ± 100 yearsDo you think that these calibration points with these error scales are appropriate or would you suggest us to use some other calibration points?I ask this as I believe research is done around this topic all the time and now I would like to hear your newest results about the divergence times of Uralic languages to see if, for example, the error scales of the timings could be narrowed. I was also hoping you could give me names of articles which I could read around this topic.I would appreciate your answers very much.With kind regards,Terhi Honkola*******************Terhi HonkolaPhD studentSection of Ecology, Department of BiologyUniversity of TurkuFIN-20014 TURKUFinland
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ura-list/attachments/20100928/719a05a6/attachment.htm>