Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Eastward migration of Finns

The origin of Finns is very indisputably from the Migration Period.  Times before it are still unclear as well as the history of  Northeastern Europe in its entirety, including at least Baltic areas and North Russia.  We can talk about Comb Ceramic, Corded Ware, Kiukainen cultures et cetera, but no one can make a true link between Stone Age cultures and the origin of modern Finns and their language and connect them to Finland.  Furthermore, the main stream linguist theory tells that our language came from the Volga basin, but it can't be proven by genetics.  Nothing in our genes links us to the Volga basin, although a large crowd enthusiasts can see it and try to prove it.  Unfortunately for them,  no respected scientific evidence has found to support this idea,  all genetic evidences has been opposite so far.    

Because we know very little about the time before the Migration Period in Finland, let's start from it.  Here are some professional views, made by non-Finnish scientists.  At first a two-piece video document of Swedish production about Baltic Sea Vikings, touching also Finns.

https://www.svtplay.se/video/16169343/ostersjofinnarna/ostersjofinnarna-sasong-1-avsnitt-1

https://www.svtplay.se/video/16169303/ostersjofinnarna/ostersjofinnarna-sasong-1-avsnitt-2?start=auto

What is interesting is how they see the beginning of Finnish settlements.  Six screenshots show how ancient Finnish settlements spread across Southern Finland and continued to the Lake Ladoga.  The presentation doesn't show the whole picture.  Our genes and language imply that they went much further to the east, at least to the Lake Onega in Northern Russia.  There is also an open question about Southern Finland.  Until now scientists have supposed that Southern Finland around our present-day capital town was uninhabited to the Swedish era.  New archaeological finds can change the history and also explain a new straight route from Southwest Finland to Karelia.  Anyway there must have been a southern route to Viking Age Ladogan settlements and Staraja Ladoga/Aldeigjuborg.













The scientific view is clear, the migration flow during the first millennium was from west to east, not from east to west.

Here is another view, a German one from Wikipedia, showing Viking settlements.  No matter how we interpret Vikings, we sure can't consider that all Scandinavians were Vikings, neither all Finns or none of them, but here we have a view about Viking Age settlements linked together.   Note that Ostrobothnia is considered as a Viking settlement.  In some sources it is assumed to have had a Swedish-Saami settlement, disappearing during the Viking Age.








German studies written by Steuer give more information about archeology and evidences about settlements during the Migration period and the Vendel era.

Ring swords



Counterweight of silver scale in the late Viking Age.  It is amazing how many counterweights in purpose to weight silver coins have been found in Finland, especially in comparison to its small population.  The Finnish population was much smaller than the Swedish one and even smaller than in Estonia.  In Estonia it was around three or four times bigger than in Finland.  Only after Northern Crusades the arrangement changed and little by little the number of Finns grew while Estonians suffered from its colony status.

Counterweight



A German book "Die Wikinger", written by Brenda Ralph Lewis, Hildegard Elsner and Nikolai Smirnov locates the heartland of Vikings.



All above was presented as an introduction to my genetic work.  Although the view shown above is anything but perfect and especially some Viking Age settlements can be criticized, it is clear that scientists can't fabricate the history and lie about the migration direction.  It is reasonable to note that my work follows the scientific view.

My new tests are based on 800000 SNP's, 744 samples and globally 104 populations. The data was haplotyped using newest available reference data from the 1000 genomes project and Shapeit software.  Haplotype data was processed using Chromopainter V2 in two steps, the first step to define run parameters, and the result is reported using Globetrotter.  Results show the best present day fit of selected population using all 103 populations as donors.

Finnish samples, 99 individuals from the 1000 genomes project are grouped into four groups using self-reporting of my project members. We see that the Finns can be defined internally with exception of the group 1, which can define other Finnish groups.   Nothing points to migrations from east, even though the data is global. 


Finnish group 1

Finnish2             0,408
Scandinavian      0,262
Finnish3             0,245
Slavic                 0,036
Near-East           0,018
Mari_Chuvash    0,012


Finnish group 2

Finnish4             0,567
Finnish1             0,378
Finnish3             0,054


Finnish group 3

Finnish4             0,783
Finnish2             0,217


Finnish group 4

Finnish3             0,738
Finnish2             0,262



Karelian-Vepsa (Eastern Baltic-Finns)

Finnish4             0,373
Baltic                   0,307
Finnish2             0,212
Mari_Chuvash     0,062
Saami                  0,017



Mordvas


Slavic                  0,516
Tatar                   0,195
Karelian_Vepsa 0,122
Baltic                  0,058
Mari_Chuvash    0,043
Caucasian          0,011


Mari-Chuvash

Tatar                   0,406
Mordva               0,256
Bashkir                0,170
Khanti-Mansi       0,090
North_Siberian   0,018
Karelian_Vepsa 0,013
Tungusic             0,011

  
Scandinavians (academic Swedish samples)

West_Europe    0,573
Finnish2           0,164
Baltic                0,162
Finnish1           0,058
Finnish3           0,031

Finnish 1 includes 26,2%, Finnish2 9,9% and Finnish3 2,1% Swedish ancestry.  


Control results

British Isles 1 (Kent)

British_Isles3    0,487 (Scottish)
West_Europe     0,453
British_Isles2    0,057 (Cornwall)



Bosnia-Hertsegovina Romas

Armenian        0,375
South_Asian    0,224
Balkan             0,195
Slavic              0,122
Near-East       0,021
Caucasian       0,017
Central_Asian 0,017










  

1 comment:

  1. This is really interesting. I've seen this documentary before, but now that I looked more into the researchers, at least two of them have some very interesting papers at https://www.academia.edu/ both in Swedish and English.

    http://lu.academia.edu/MatsRoslund
    http://lu.academia.edu/IngridGustin

    I know next to nothing about the genetics involved, but I think it makes a lot of sense to consider the possibility of a significant Baltic Finnic push eastwards along the Russian rivers - peaking during the Vendel Period if I'm not mistaken? Wouldn't suddenly flourishing trade have precisely enabled this kind of spreading?

    Would it then also make sense to think of Finland, especially the southwestern coast, as a place where specialized people, made rich by being involved in trade along with the Scandinavians, settled and formed a kind of extension of the Baltic Finnic areas south of the Gulf of Finland? I've often wondered about the Iron Age finds there, as there seem to have been relatively few people with a lot of swords and goods. The Iron Age material culture seems strikingly similar to that of Germanic groups. I wonder what the situation was like in Estonia during that time. Were the people there too an integral part of the same trade network, or does it even make any sense to distinguish them from those who settled in Finland? What sorts of finds do we have in Estonia? Shouldn't it be considered the Baltic Finnic heartland at this point?

    If I'm getting this right, apparently the trade was somehow interrupted by new developments in Novgorod and Kiev. Did this emergence of a strong middleman, so to speak, affect the relations between Scandinavians and Baltic Finns? At least there are a lot of mentions of warfare and plundering between all the groups in the Baltic region after the Vendel Period - possibly because of increased competition or disturbances in trade, or simply because we lack any documentation before that time? These are just my hasty uneducated guesses and I'll have to look into it more for sure.

    Thanks a lot for sharing this and for all the work you do!

    ReplyDelete

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