B. Lukács

President of Matter Evolution Subcommittee

of the

Geonomic Scientific Committee

of the Hungarian Academy of Science

CRIP RMKI, H-1525 Bp. 114. Pf. 49., Budapest, Hungary

lukacs@rmki.kfki.hu

Ugric languages are the biggest (surviving) group of Old Palaeo-Europe from before the advent of Indo-Germans. Here World History from strictly Ugric viewpoint is given. Note that because of rapid adaptation of Magyars to steppe lifestyle now Magyars have not Ugric physical anthropology, are 4,000 km West from their nearest kins, and even their folk music is more Altaic than Ugric or Finnish. The present map of Uralic world, therefore, is very much different from that of 2 millenia ago.

Indo-Germanic and Indo-European are synonymes. Here I use the first, because Indo-European would erroneously suggest that they are the Europeans.

It is a commonplace in Hungary that we are and were at the boundary of two worlds. Let us see the commonplaces in backward temporal direction.

Since 1999 we are the Eastern border of NATO. Also, in May 2004 we shall become the Eastern boundary of EU, and in 2007 (?) the Eastern border of the Schengen Border Control Agreement.

Between 1949 & 1989 we had (a part of) the Iron Curtain, the border of First and Second Worlds. To be sure, we were East of it.

Between 1541 & 1699 the border of Europe (in political sense) and the Ottoman Empire dissected the Kingdom of Hungary. In military sense the Carpathian Basin consisted of 3 parts: Western & Northern Hungary in Imperial alliance, Transylvania, more friendly with the Ottoman than with the German Empire, and the territory under Ottoman occupation. Still in legal sense the Kingdom was unitary, while for legislation it consisted two parts: the Duchy of Transylvania with its Parliament elected in Transylvania, and the territories of the King which were not the territories of the Duke, with its Parliament in Pressburg (just now Bratislava, Slovakia) elected by all the nobles & royal cities not of Transylvania. (I am serious but I do not want to disturb outsiders with the details.)

In 1054 the Great Schism of Christianity happened (on the questions of the origin of the Holy Spirit & Papal supremacy). Hungary went with the West, her Eastern neighbours with the East.

Between c. AD 490 & AD 568 the Danube was the border of West German Langobards and East German Gepids. Note that they were fanatic enemies. You can trace this in Wagnerian operas. It is only a small thing that the Gepid wife of Wacho, King of Langobards was Ostrogoto at home and Austrigusa in his husband's court; think at present Schwitzerland. But think of the story of Alboin, King of Langobards, his captive Rosamunda, daughter of Cunimund, King of Gepids, and the skull of Cunimund, drinking cup of victorious Alboin. (And also think of Rosamunda, daughter of the drinking cup and Queen of Alboin, when on 28 June, 572, already in Italy, for her blood feud, joins with Helmechis, who then kills Alboin, whose habit was to drink from the skull of Cunimund.)

Between 13 BC and 433 AD the border of the Roman Empire vs. Barbary was the Danube. And so on.

And still, in this study I am going deeper into history.

Cavalieri-Sforza's seminal article [1] show 5 waves of forming the present population of Europe. The method is definitely scientific, the method of principal components. This does not mean that only 5 waves took place; but older waves cannot yet be seen in the genetic composition of Europeans. Wave 1 may have been the immigration of first agriculturalists from the Fertile Crescent, and Wave 2 is either a wandering of dolichocephalic Mediterraneans to Northeast, or oppositely, the wandering of somebody from Northeast (Proto-Lapponians? Cromagnonids? Preslavs? &c.) to Southwest. Wave 3 is the propagation of Yamnaya Culture (mounted Indo-Germans) into Poland -> Germany -> Denmark just after 4200 BC (the Carpathian Basin, the victorious Bodrogkeresztúr War Chief, repelled the mounted barbarians, see [2]). So the North/South anthropologic gradient was formed sometimes between BC 6000 and BC 4000. On both sides of the border there were non-Indo-Germanic Palaeoeuropeans.

It would be very interesting to describe this border and the cultures in contact there. However I am unable to do this. Maybe Marija Gimbutas could do this, but Lithuanian is Indo-Germanic.

I think, the Southwestern side of the border was populated by far relatives of Basques. A far guess is the almost unknown northern neighbour of Etruscan with some mysterious rock paintings from Valle Camonica plus a handful of inscriptions. But we do not know anything about the language of the Northeastern side. Some recent Indo-Germans might guess Proto-Lapps, but I think, without any serious reason. At least, recent Lapponians are reindeer half-nomads and there were no reindeers in neothermal Carpathian Basin; and recent Lapponians have the lowest crural index of Anatomically Modern Humans which cannot be seen in Copper Age Carpathian Basin.

Surely, research of substrates in recent Indo-Germanic languages might help, but to my knowledge no result is reported so far. In addition, in the last 1100 years the dominant language of the Carpathian Basin, the Northeastern side of the old boundary, is not Indo-German. So I am unable to treat this border, I do not believe any Indo-German is able, and then I must be satisfied with a substitute.

Anyways, in cca. 5000 BC there were peoples Northeast of the border (roughly River Dravus). If Northeast Europe were not populated by a linguistic family, it may have been at least by a linguistic league. Recently we do know a linguistic continuum scretching from Hungary to the Chukch Peninsula (and maybe farther, to the North American Na-Denes, but that is uncertain). Some loose kinship (not necessarily genetic) of Finno-Ugrians, Samoyeds, Yukagirs, Yenisei Kets, Chukchs and Eskimo-Aleuts is indeed linguistically established; and from social point of view indeed language, primary tool of understanding, is more fundamental than physical antropology, as anybody daily sees it in Hungary. So very probably the Northeastern Palaeoeuropeans belonged to this Finno-Ugric-Yukagir-Ket-Chukch -(Na-Dene) continuum. (You may append the continuum to the south by the Altaic languages. The connection is certain, and close with Ugric. The degree of kinship is uncertain. I leave this to Turk colleagues. Anyways, they are 4 times as many as Magyars/Hungarians. I would like to see their viewpoint. But in the present study I take the responsibility for the Altaaic peoples too in my person.)

However let us see the recent populations of the continuum:

So for the survivors at least the Northeastern Palaeoeuropeans in first approximations now can be represented by the Finno-Ugrians, + Samoyeds as outgroup. I do here so. What has been lost is lost.

Finno-Ugrians + Samoyeds together are called Uralians. (Samoyed would be a non-PC name meaning "self-eating", i.e. "cannibal". For less speakers were called racists. However this name is Russian, and Russians may use any terms. Of course, Samoyed does not eat Samoyed. They eat reindeer, as Cro-Magnons did (but not in the Carpathian Basin). Uralians and Yukagirs together are not called anything, but very probably this is the next group. Beyond this the kinship is equivocal.

We do not have too old written documents from Finno-Ugrian languages. The earliest extant written documents are:

For the other languages this is c. AD 1700-1800. Note that Indo-German languages are preserved since 1600 BC.

However all Indo-Germanic languages are very close each other, being languages of newcomers, differentiating lately, on the backs of subjugated Palaeoeuropeans (think of Basques). The old verses of Knowledge in Sanskrit are called Veda=Knowledge, and the editorial house of the Slovak Academy of Sciences is also Veda. The various Finno-Ugric languages differ at least as much as Indo-Germans do. True, Estonians could (in Soviet times) understand more or less TV programs from Finland; but Lapps do not understand Finns if they do not learn the language, although they are neighbours. And via family trees we can fairly reconstruct the evolution of the Finno-Ugric family back to 4000 BC (and note that this is the time of the beginning of Indo-German spreading).

Indeed, I found some sites of Internet (not too many) showing maps of reconstructed palaeo-Europe, where big territories of Northeastern Europe were Finno-Ugric, surely surprising Russians. However these maps are generally drawn from Finnish viewpoint. Let us see again some statistics, now within the Finno-Ugrian family:

In details:

Ugric

Finnish

The statistics are uncertain. Interestingly, Soviet statistics are the most reliable. Censuses for Magyars outside the area of the Central Statistical Office (of Hungary) are utterly unreliable since 1920, and numbers of Magyars in USA and Israel are matters of uncertainty even for order of magnitude. Also, some hundreds of thousands of Finns may or may not live in USA. Still, the above statistics are much better and more reliable than for Indians or other substrates of Indo-Germans.

Not accidentally. Magyars were never subjugated to any Indo-Germans (at least not until 1920 AD at the peripheries of the Carpathian Basin) although the official language of Hungary bw. 1000 and 1841 AD was Indo-Germanic Latin. Finns were subjects of the Swedish, then the Russian Crown, but Finland always had some autonomy as a Grand Duchy. And in Soviet Union national autonomies were more elaborated than in most Europe. Anyway, I can give the above numbers as cca. in 1960. And if you look at, the Ugric group is bigger than the Finnish one.

My guess is that this was not known for 90 % of the Internet users knowing anything about the problem. It has a lot of explanations, as e.g.

Finns use more the Internet than Magyars do;

Finns were West of the Iron Curtain (but only slightly), while Magyars were East of it (but only slightly);

Finland is a member of EU since 1995, while Hungary (and Estonia) will be only in 2004;

Finns know better English than Hungarians;

Finn GDP/capita is just now much higher than Hungarian one.

Still, the above statistics demonstrates that within the Finno-Ugric linguistic family there are two groups, for order of magnitude equal, Finnish and Ugric (and the second is bigger). And the only other non-Indo-Germanic group of Europe is Basque, much smaller.

Now the (probably Indo-Germanic) reader can understand why I discuss the Finno-Ugric World, instead of the Palaeo-European World, which I cannot satisfactorily reconstruct; and why I am going to discuss the border between Finnish and Ugric.

The absolute majority of Finno-Ugrians is Magyar. The oldest Academy of Sciences of the Finno-Ugric World is the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, since 1825; and its First Department is Linguistics. So it is not surprising that the absolute majority of Finno-Ugric linguists are Magyars. (While Magyar and Hungarian are not synonymes, in this study if you do not know the difference, you make the lest error if you do not distinguish them.) So in many questions the Magyar consensus is the Finno-Ugric majority opinion; but in many questions the Magyar and Finnish majority opinions coincide. Such a strong consensus is the primordial Finnish/Ugric cleavage.

To be sure, all Finno-Ugric languages, when contrasting to any Indo-Germanic one, are really in one group, either for non-loan words, or for grammar. E.g. all Finno-Ugric languages are agglutinative, while all traditional Indo-Germans have flexion, some simplified ones as English or Afrikaans are nearly isolating. Instead of theorising, for the difference between flexion and agglutination I give the forms for "friend" in Latin, Magyar & Finn; the table is complete for Latin in singular:

The declination of "friend" in Sg:

(If the Finn/Suomalainen forms are erroneous, somebody will sooner or later contact me.)

Now you can see the structural difference. In Latin the Nominative is one of the cases, with a specific ending; in Finnish & Hungarian it is the Absolute, without any ending at all. Also, in Finno-Ugric there is in principle no limit for cases. In Finnish there is 15, in Magyar cca. 30; but for more constructions you can put more words behind of the noon. In a lot of constructions Finno-Ugric seems topsy-turvy in contrast to Indo-German (as, e.g. also Japanese).

Now, in this example Finnish & Magyar are together in contrast to Latin. But also, you can see the difference in lexica. A Hungarian generally understands better a German, Neo-Latin or Slavic newspaper than a Finnish, because Indo-German loanwords of Magyar are more than Finno-Ugric common stems.

And for lexica the majority of Finno-Ugric languages are closer to each other, but three stand apart, grouping again together. Also, some grammatical tricks are common in these 3 languages and nowhere else. Let us see examples.

1) Verbal conjugation. In all FU languages there is a trick difficult to explain in Indo-Germanic. In Sg. 3 the verb has 2 endings, one with indefinite object, one with definite one. (He sees an object/he sees the object.) But in the 3 Ugric languages the whole conjugation is doubled for indefinite/definite objects.

2) Common words. There are words common in the 3 Ugric languages, but not with the Finnish ones. I give one example:

(in the Ugric group I used Hungarian orthography).

3) Common Palaeo-Turkic loanwords in Ugric. There are a few words existing in the 3 Ugric languages and in some Turkic (or Mongolian) ones but not in any Finnish. I give 3 examples; still it is arguable if they came from Palaeo-Turkic, or from the common ancestor of Turk and Mongolian.

(where in the Ugric words "ch" as in German).

Now from a lot of such examples it is clear that Finno-Ugric first split into Proto-Finnish and Proto-Ugric. When and where?

For the first an answer (maybe not the only one) is cca. 2000 BC. For the second obviously the Ugric group was the more Eastern (Ugors show more affinity to "Asia" even in physical antropology than Finns, and now 2 of the 3 Ugric languages are in Asia), but maybe for average latitude there was no significant difference.

So we are sometime between in 2000 BC and 500 BC. There is a border, somewhere between the River Volga (in Magyar Világ(os)=Bright; no joke: the Turkish name Etil means the same; only I think the name comes from Mordvin. A lot of time is needed still when Slavs would reach the Bright River) and Mnt. Ural.

And then?

Ugric community existed cca. bw. 2000 & 500 BC. It does not exist now. The average Magyar never meets a Man'si or a Khanti; and an average Man'shi never saw a Magyar, although he may have read poems of Shaman's son Yuvan Sestalov where he is informed that Magyars are their closest relatives.

Still, there are the names. Hungarian linguists explain Magyar as Magy Er i.e. Magyar Man. And then the first syllables of Magyar and Man'shi are the same. This is hard to see for outsiders; not only because the national orthograpies. Also, some important changes happened before the first written documents. For a while you are asked to accept the common root of the two names; you will see the evidence in due course. Let us go back now to 500 BC, somewhere between River Volga (Rha, Etil, ...) and Mnt. Ural. There is a community there. Of course, it is not called Ugric. That name is a mistake. Russians called the land of some Man'shis Yugra, I do not know why; Russian monks called Magyars Vengers, because they mistook them as Onogurs (who were Chuvashoid r-Turks); some Germans in the XIXth century observed the similarity between their word Ungarn=Hungary and Russian Yugra. We do know that the community called itself cca. Man'c', i.e. Men (see App. A), and we do not yet know how we called the land of ours. But that land was indefinite, anyways. Man'c' Land had no natural boundaries (even Mountain Ural, the famous border of Europe & Asia, is hard to be recognised even if you cross it on railway); you can find fish in any river and prey everywhere in the tundra.

And then, cca. 500 BC, some Altaics arrived. We do not know who they were. Time is too early to expect real Turks. Maybe they were the common ancestors of Turks and Mongolians. Anyways, they left their influence on Ugrians, but not on Finnish. It is hard to tell, why the word "word" was taken by all Ugrians; surely they spoke already earlier. Maybe some zoologist has some idea why "swan" and "beaver" was taken from Palaeo-Turkic by Ugrians; I never was told. But the fact that they all took these words and Finnish did not, indicates that Ugrians were then in a knot, between Finnish & Altaic.

But I can tell something more definite. The words "swan" and "beaver" evolved rather similarly in the 3 extant Ugric languages. Both swan=kotang & beaver=kund starts in Palaeo-Turkic (Altaic?) with an unvoiced stop "k". In Man'shi & Khanti this stop in the above words is "weakened" into a fricative, as German and Scottish "ch". Now, in recent Magyar it is a rule that in old words "k-" before front vovels remained "k", but before back ones it is now "h". Still, in 800 year old manuscripts it was written with a "ch".

It would be easy then to form a hypothesis. "Swan" & "beaver" were taken by Common Ugric from Altaic with initial "k-". Then it weakened to "ch-", and after this Ugric forked into Magyar, Man'shi & Khanti. However, in Southern Man'shi & Eastern Khanti the old initial "k-" is "k" even now. So we might have taken "kotang" and "kund" as single language or we might have taken as two or three. But only we took them.

There is a historical hero of Magyar/Hungarian history, who, in 907, when Western Imperial forces tried to uproot Magyars from the Carpathian Basin, valiantly defended the Magyar case and the freedom of Hungary at the Battle of Pressburg (Pozsony in Magyar, Presporok in Slovakian and Bratislava in Czechoslovakian). That battle was decisive; you see, we are in the Basin, even if there are even some theories that the Magyar Duke, conqueror of new homeland, Árpád, died in the battle; surely he died in that year. Now, in that decisive battle our hero swam under the River Danube and bored holes into Imperial ships, so sinking them. His name is Búvár Kund, i.e. Kund the Diver. OK, he swam as a beaver. But does this prove that in 907 AD initial "k-" was still unchanged, or rather Kund's name was Turkish, not Magyar? It might well have been. Árpád's son, Zoltán (or Zsolt) got the name which is obviously Turkish. Outsiders know it as "Sultan"=ruler.

And then, after 500 BC, Palaeo-Magyars move slowly South, Man'shis & Khantis slowly North. But do not forget that the unique Ugric horse terminology is common even now. Now let us look at the Finnish group.

Now the Finnish languages survive on 3 sites. First, Komi, Komi-Permian and Udmurt East of the River Volga (=Rha=Etil=Bright=Világos). Note that you may know the term "Perm": its name is in the geologic term "Permian". In the time of Darwin some good Permian relics were unearthed from Province Perm. Also, for Russian Greek Orthodoxes Stephen of Perm, Apostle of Udmurts, is a substantial saint.

The second site is along the River Volga (=Rha=Etil=...), Maris & Mordvins.

And the third site is the Baltic: Estonians, Finns, small nations, plus the somewhat mysterious Lapponians.

Now, Finnish groups may have moved from the Baltic to the East; or from Perm to the West; or from a site in between in both directions. Ugric consensus is that they trekked West; you will see the evidence in due course.

True, Tacitus [3] writes cca. 100 AD about "Finnes" in Scandinavia, and describes a rather unsophisticated polar lifestyle. But Finno-Ugric experts seem to have a consensus that Tacitus' Finnes are the Lapponians; later Finns got their names from Scandinavian neighbours on the basis of Tacitus. OK, then you may tell that Lapponians must have been in Scandinavia in 100 AD; you are right, they probably were already there. Whence and when and how: I do not know. Did they borrow the language? If so, why so badly? They are anthropologically unique; they are reindeer nomads as Samoyeds and as Magdalenian Cro-Magnons. Generally Lapponians have dashed lines in FU linguistic family trees; you may raise hypotheses. I now will not; I am Ugric, not Finnish.

Then Permians did not move much, Volga Finns stopped at the Big River (in the 1st millenium BC), and Finns, Estonians, Vepses, Inkeris, Livs &c. arrived at the Baltic region not much after Tacitus. Observe that Syvtykvar, Tallinn and Helsinki all are roughly along the 60th parallel; Volga Finns are slightly Southward but not more than Moscow. It seems that the Great Trek involved lands of same climate. We do not know the reason of the Great Trek; but, what is more critical, we do not know the ways of it. Surely, Northeastern Europe was not empty then. Northern Palaeo-Europeans lived there; in general sense kins of Finnish, but maybe not too close kins (we do not know). Then the trekking Finnish assimilated their fellow Northern Palaeo-Europeans: why? Surely they had an advantage over them; but what?

In recent Magyar there are two words for "dog": "kutya" and "eb". As often, one word is used by everybody, and the other when one is very high-stylish or official. E.g. the vegetable "spinach" is always "spenót" when we are speaking about, but on restaurant menu lists it is always "paraj" (maybe this is the original word). Similarly, "potato" is "krumpli" if we eat it, but "burgonya" officially. And our dog is always "kutya" except if we are paying the tax for it, or bringing it to the veterinarian for obligatory inoculation.

Now: Magyar "eb" = Man'shi "ämp" or "amp" [4]. The word is Ugric, exists in Khanti too but nowhere outside. But there are words occurring in Finnish languages too. I give some examples. I do not distinguish here within Ob Ugors (Man'shi & Khanti), within Perm Finns (Komi, Permian & Udmurt), and within other Finnish, including even Proto-FU. Let us see!

The pattern is clear enough. The original Common Finno-Ugric form was nasal+unvoiced (stop or fricative); in a lot of languages it remained so, but not in Magyar and Perm Finnish. In the latter ones the nasal vanished but first voiced the unvoiced stop/fricative.

No problem. We do not know why, but we do not know that in a lot of linguistic changes. The tendency for this change was the strongest near to the Magyar-Perm Finnish border and weakened in both directions.

But look: that was/is the border of not languages but subfamilies! Magyar was very far from Permian already! Magyar may have been partly intelligible for Man'shis (or not) and vice versa; but it would be very surprising if still in linguistic community with Permians.

What happened in the border of two Northeastern Palaeo-European Worlds about 100 BC? Recent languages are witnesses; but of what?

Sometimes in early AD times a great success is going to happen; and it is still a success in 2003, 2 millenia later. After cca. 500 BC Palaeo-Magyars slowly move Southeast, Palaeo-Man'shis/Khantis Northeast. And then, suddenly (?), Magyars and Turks meet each other.

We know that the first mounted people was the Yamnaya culture in Late 5th millenium BC in present Ukraine; the Indo-Germanic primordial population (minus Anatolians?). Indo-Germans (or at least the Iranian subgroup) were the Lords of the Eurasian Steppe for 5,000 years. History starts with Kimmerians, then Scythians, then Sarmathians.

Then something happens. Hiung-nus of Mao-Tun organise vast Hunnish mounted armies on the border of China, then grassland dies out in Dzhungaria (farthest point on Earth from oceans), and the Huns go to West. Under Balambér (375 AD) they cross Volga (=Etil), and they reach the Roman Empire under Buda (433) and Atilla (445). For a while the steppe goes to the Altaic Turks.

From Khan Genghis (=Cingiz) the steppe is dominated by Altaic Mongolians, then by Altaic Manchus. Then the Industrial Revolution takes away the steppe from horsemen.

But in this story there is one exception. Ugric Magyars in their steppe times (until 1000 AD) were no second to anybody on horseback. They learnt horse economy probably from Turks, lived on horseback, drank the fermented milk of mares (kumis), ate horsemeat, were buried with the favorite horse, and carved a land for themselves, some 3,000 km West of their primordial homeland. What a cultural assimilation! What a successful convergence to leading cultures!

Nobody copied this success in the Finno-Ugric/Palaeo-European World. Anyhow, Magyars trekked as much as Finns to the West, but in fifth of time (you can travel faster on horseback).

Remember that there was an original, autochtonous and unique Ugor horse terminology, so horse culture. Then, when southward-moving Proto-Magyars met Turks on the border of the steppe, they were not preys. No doubt, Turkish horse culture was superior; our horse terminology is full with Turkish words now. However there is an Ugric language (Magyar) which took the Turkish words of high civilisation (for an analogy see App. B.). And our "internal" name Magyar is still the old term for all Ugors. And we are the only non-Indo-Germanic population in Europe which never was dominated by Indo-Germans.

On 1st May, 2004 we go into the European Union...

In Hungary it is a commonplace that not much before the conquest of the Carpathian Basin (896 AD) Magyars split into two, and one group did not come to West. This is not just folklore or epics. Brother Julian found them in the 1230's, just before they were occupied by the Mongols [5]. A century later Pope John XXII instructed Brother Gerhardus, Dalmatian, going to Georgia as mission bishop that the "Ungari Asiatici", are hopeful subjects to be converted, from among which "excels Yeretamir", from the progeny of the Hungarian Kings (see e.g. [6], again in Hungarian of course). Of course, the Pope was mistaken. The interesting Asiatic nation could not be "Ungari Asiatici", because "Hungarus" came with the territory. They could have been Magyari Asiatici. Or: Mangyari.

Now, Tardy found two traces of them, one almost recent, the other a written record.

The k. und k./csász. és kir. Ministry of War (imp. & roy.) of Austria-Hungary made a census of some 7,000 Mohamedan "Russian" PoW's in 1915. (See [7], but, because it is again Hungarian, I give the bibliographic data of the original document too as [8].). For nationality 10 of them were "Moscharen". Knowing the usual Austrian mishearing and spelling of Magyar words, surely, the nationality is "Mozhar". Now, with slight dialectal differences this would be regular variant of an original "Man'c'iar", so may be the same ethnonym (after the Permian-Magyar denasalization+voicing) as "Magyar". Tardy indeed does believe that this 10 were from Eastern Magyars.

The other trace is a reinterpretation of a small but hopefully representative sample of the slave merchandise in the Genoan colony Caffa in Crimea in 1289-90 [7]. The sellers were always Tartars. 66 slaves were evaluated. Among them 1 was Hungarian, 5 was Maniars and 2 Bolgarians.

Tardy argues that XIIIth century Genoan orthography used simple -i- instead of -gi- [9]. His examples are: Mar Maior for Mare Maggiore; Maniavacha for Mangiavacca and Moniardino for Mongiardino. Although my opinion is irrelevant, being a physicist, I note that we are before the formation of Litterary Italian, Genua is at the North, near to France, we are before the Humanist innovation of distinguishing "i" from "j" and present French would write the second part of Mongiardino, which is "giardino" in Litterary Italian as "jardin".

Of the 5 "Maniar" slaves 3 are women and their names are irrelevant because they got them from the former owners; 2 are Margheritas, 1 is Archona. The 2 men are Balaban & Teronda. I cite a brief part from the first document:

"In nomine Domini amen. Ego Ansaldus Gatilusius confiteor tibi Baliano Anioino me tibi vendidisse sclavum unum de proienie maniar, nominatum Balaban, qui fuit Gengis de Sorchati, cum omni juri servitutis..."

You can check it in [10] if you want. But remember the words "ant=hangya" and "langy=tepid" (in App. A) versus "tusk=agyar". If there was a dialect, in which the Permian and Magyar denasalisation did not work: while the nasal voiced the next vowel, it did not drop out, then in it "tusk" became "angyar", not recorded, but Magyar" was "Mangyar", recorded by the Genoan notary Oberto Bartholomeo as "maniar" but pronounciated as "mangiar" so "Mangyar". Q.E.D.

It is hard to tell when Mangyars split from Magyars; the latest possible date is cca. 830 AD. If we can believe Pope John XXII, telling that Yeretamir was from the blood of ther holy kings of Hungary, we must be careful. The first King of Hungary was Stephen I, the Saint, 1000-1038. Yeretamir could not be his descendant. The name is Turkish and he was pagan. Yeretamir might have had common ancestors with St. Stephen or St. Ladislaus. But we do not know about emigration from the Carpathian Basin led by a Duke. So the latest possible common ancestor of the holy kings and Yeretamir can be Elôd, father of Álmos (father of Árpád, the Conqueror). A younger brother of Álmos may have gone with the Mangyars, or, more probably, a younger brother of Elôd, if Pope John XXII was well informed.

The Soviet Union was dissolved in 1992, and travels became possible. Historical reconstructions try to put the lost brothers cca. into Georgia, but in a decade nobody appeared. It seems that the fourth Ugric language is extinct.

When the PFU divided into PF and PU (say, in 2000 BC) the border of the Ugric and Finnish Worlds (say, 1st World and 2nd World) of Palaeo-Europe must have been somewhere between R. Volga & Mnt. Ural, maybe along R. Kama. River Kama is a very important river of prehistory. Still, for a Man'shi or for an Udmurt it is transnavigable. Although Russians reconstruct in such a way that still in 1200 Man'shis and/or Khantis lived on both sides of the Ural, there must have been some gap along the demarcation line, otherwise there would not be disjoint Ugric and Finnish subfamilies now.

Magyars maybe lived between the rivers Kama and Byelaya, but they must have trekked southward on horseback not later than 463 AD, that being the beginning of the Second Migration Wave, mentioned by Rhetor Priscus as contemporary. It is highly improbable that Magyars bw. Kama and Byelaya could have remained undisturbed by the migration; and if they had not been horse warriors then, they would have been used as living target by somebody or expelled to Northeast.

Previously they were closest to Udmurts and Permians, but the connection could not be intimate, otherwise Magyar would be the Lost Link in a continuum of FU between Udmurts and Man'shis, while according to linguistic consensus Man'shis and Udmurts belong to separate subfamilies and Magyars solidly classify with Man'shis.

Still Magyar and Perm Finns seem to have formed a linguistic league. There is a regular phonetic property, the denasalisation + voicing of original nasal + unvoiced stop/affricate connection in them and only in them; there is the common infinitive ending in them and only in them &c. Now, a linguistic league is formed when two populations of languages outside of understanding communicate much. An example is Roumanian & Bulgarian on the Balkan. How did first pre-Magyars and pre-Udmurts lose the mutual understanding and then forming a linguistic league later?

And then: Volga Bulgarian loanwords of Perm Finnish did participate in the denasaisation/voicing! But when Volga Bulgarians arrived (after the death of Khagan Kovrat, c. 650), Magyars already went away! Rédei [11] guesses, obviously conservatively, VII-VIIIth c. for the Permian denasalisation. But then what could drive the same process for ex-neighbours? Something is wrong here; we cannot understand something.

In 463 Magyars entered the Steppe community while Man'shis and Khantis sidestepped Northeastward. Any possibility for Ugric-Finnish convergence vanished.

And on 1st May, 2004 enters the first (moderately) polysynthetic language the European Union. Translators, beware!

Here comes a partially improbable story; but it is Orthodox Ugric linguistics. So let us see.

I told in the main text that "Magy" in Magyar and "Man'" in Man'shi are regarded homologous. For clear argumentation I will give a very approximate "phonetic" English transription in brackets {} when it may help. "Magy" is {Maj} and "Man'" is {Many}.

Surely, there is the Magyar (and Permian) denasalisation behind. Postulate an original "Man'c'" (cca. {Manycy}). Then it goes "Man's'" {Manysh} in Man'shi, and the -n- vanishes while voicing the second consonant in Magyar (and Permian Finnish) as "Magy" {Maj}. (Note that {Maj} is the original pronunciation, up to 1300 AD. Now it is {Mady}, but why to complicate it?)

Unfortunately we do not know this word in Permians, being purely Ugric, but we know a complete analogy given in the main text as the word meaning "tusk" [12]. In Magyar it is "agyar", so you can put an initial "M" and can see what happens. So:

Now, linguists guess that this word did not exist in proto-FU (except if Finn "mies" = "man" corresponds to it, which is not certain at all), being Ugric, we shall immediately see, why.

There is a commonplace hypothesis in Hungarian linguistics, going back to the illustrious Munkácsi in 1901 [13], that the original Ugric "man'c'" = "man" is a loanword from some Iranian language, where it had cca. the form "manush" in that time. While it is strange to borrow our own name, the Iranian and Ugric forms are indeed near enough. See [14] as a standard article; unfortunately again it is in Magyar.

Now in Man'shi the word "Man's'i" may mean also Khanti together with Man'shis [15]. It cannot mean Magyars, but Man'shis did not seen any Magyar between 463 and 1844 AD. So it is really the way of ethnonym "we", "true humans" &c. Finnish people are different.

In Magyar the -n'- vanished but first voiced the unvoiced -c'- (or -s'- or -sh-). The result became a "Magy" with the pronounciation of cca. "Maj"; but I would like to approximate it more as "Madzh". Anyway, the end-consonant is a palatal "g", written in modern Italian as "-gi-". This is quite regular.

Still, lot of authors (e.g. [12], [16] and [17]) call attention to the fact that in a few cases recent Magyar kept the -n- while voicing the next consonant. One example is "hangya" = "ant". Another is "kengyel" = "stirrup". This is originally a compound word: "kengy-al", "beneath the kengy". And "kengy" is regularly Ugric: Magyar "kengy" = Man'shi "ken's'" = Khanti "kentsh". In the last 2 it means a boot from reindeer hide, so "kengy" is "boot" and "kengy-al" is just below the boot while riding.

And there are cases when variants both and without -n- have survived, with slightly modified meaning. See two examples:

So a minority part of proto-Magyar dialects kept -n-. Maybe they were farthest from Permians? From the lágy~langy pair ("langy" does exist: "langymeleg" is "tepid" for air temperature; since "meleg" is "warm", "langymeleg" is mirror to "soft warm") one would expect Magyar~Mangyar. It is recorded; see the main text.

As you know, present English is a hybrid of Western German Anglo-Saxon (nearest recent kin is Friesian) and Neo-Latin Normann, a dialect of French. Although for us, Palaeo-Europeans, the 2 parent languages are quite near to each other, the hybridisation could have happened only by discarding almost all synthetic tools. Declensions and conjugations were lost almost to isolation.

Now, present Magyar seems to be a hybrid of pre-Migration Ugric Magyar, and a "Chuvashoid" r-Turkish language, identical or near to the language of Volga Bulgarians. Still Magyar remained strongly synthetic, even slightly polysynthetic. Obviously the social processes behind this amalgamation were different from those in England; it is hard to tell more.

Then, at the new homeland, we chose Latin as the official language. Latin had a rather strong influence on Magyar, maybe similarly as r-Turkish a millenium earlier. This fact I demonstrate with two texts, see [17]. The first is from the autobiography of Nicolaus Bethlen, several times Chancellor of Transylvania in the second half of XVIIth century. I note that in Transylvania Magyar was sometimes used even in high administration. The excerpt speaks about the political activity of the Chancellor; Magyar words will be in normal font, Latin stems with Magyar endings in boldface and Latin stems with Latin grammar in Comic Sans MS.

"Én soha semmit is nem vitatok magamért ex studio contradicendi et dominandi, hanem az uram és hazám szolgálatjaért in publicis; quod ad causas privatorum juxta materiae subjectae qualitatem az én conscientiám és instructiom szerint a törvényért és az igazságért; quod ad mea privata, Erdély és a generális tudja, én azokban mind patiens vagyok. De sepositis privatis, szóljunk de publicis. Az én disputálásom semmi, mert az csak discursus, mely mindenkinek szabad és szokás, hiszen osztán minden voksra mégyen, ad maiora concluditur, per me et secretarios expeditur, sed per dominum gubernatorem quando subscribitur et quomodo effectuatur?"

OK, this is the text of a statesman, and the official language is Latin. Then let us see the text of a soldier, several decades later. Hungary had an 8 year war against the German Emperor, practically against Austria, and national feelings were strong. However these national feelings were those of the Natio Hungarica. General Antal Esterházy issues a command to the authorities of several counties (requirations & such), the counties are in the central area of Hungary, so they are predominantly Magyar, so General Esterházy gets the strange idea to write them in Magyar. As follows:

"Tudhatja penig jól az nemes vármegye, hogy azon praesidiumnak elvesztésével minémô nagy periclitatiot causálna ki-ki az nemes hazának; hogy peniglen az ellenség mostani motusainak alkalmatosságával valamely nonputarem következhetnék azon praesidiumnak: in tempore kivántam arrul prospiciálni, és ezen levelemet megadó executoriumot ezen nemes vármegyében, singulariter penig vice-ispányjára expediálnom, oly conditioval, hogy ha ô kegyelmének nehéz ôket tolerálni, tahát ossza ki az nemes vármegye szolgabiráira, mely executorok mindaddig rajtuk fognak csiripölni, méglen az hatszáz manualis laboratorokat ásókkal és kapákkal és kétszáz szekereket ad locum destinatum nem fogják praestálni; kiket hogy confestim admaturáljanak, serio adhortálom."

Now anybody can see that the Chanchellor likes pure Latin constructions parallelly with pure Magyar ones, while the General thinks: if I am writing Magyar, be it Magyar. So he takes Latin stems and handles them as Magyar ones. You see: the Comic Sans MS fonts are rare in the General's text, and I tell you that with their exception the grammar is pure and perfect Magyar.

This might have been the mechanism behind the linguistic hybridisation before 463 AD. If proto-Magyars took Chuvashoid Turkish words in any quantity for statemanship, military organisation and wine culture, but handled them as the Magyar words, the language did not have to be simplified. And of course, Altaic grammar is much nearer to Ugric one, than Latin is.

The maps are only approximative and follow a Mercator projection. If anybody has arguments against a map, please contact me; in some questions there is no consensus at all. Very probably in some points the maps are incorrect; good maps would explain a lot more than these.

F = Finn

U = Ugor

S = Samoyed

Mgy = Magyar

Mns = Man'shi

Mng = Mangyar

Kh = Khanti

PF = Perm Finns (Komi, Permian & Udmurt)

VF = Volga Finns (Mari & Mordvin)

BF = Baltic Finns (Finn, Estonian, Vepse &c.)

L = Lapponians

Indo-Germans are ignored.

Fig. 1: End of Uralic unity, c. 4000 BC? Note that we do not know the name of any non-Indo-Germanic population within the borders of the map. Very probably the Pécel culture (Indo-Germans rather call it Baden, but that is Baden bei Wien, so autochtonous Carpathian Basin culture) was not Indo-Germanic. Probably proto-Lapponians had still not Finnish language; they may have occupied a wide northern strip but where exactly?

Fig. 2: End of FU unity, c. 2000 BC? The location of proto-Lapponians is unknown and others’ names are not preserved.

Fig. 3: End of Finnish unity. Maybe 1500 BC. See the demarcation line bw. Kama & Ural. Ancestors of later Baltic Finns are still together with Volga Finns.

Fig. 4: End of Ugric unity. According to Hungarian majority opinion c. 500 BC. Baltic Finns are moving Westward. I think, the language of Lapponians is still not Finnish. It seems as if there were an empty borderland bw. Ugors and Perm Finns, but maybe the Ugor territory extended until R. Kama.

Fig. 5: Huns have retired to Black Sea, Bolgar (Onogur) migration has started. No peace at the steppe. 465 AD. All bigger Finnish groups are already approximatively at "final" positions. All Ugors are in motion. Magyar-Bolgar intimate connections are proven by archaeology, linguistics (lot of r-Turkish loanwords in Magyar) and Magyar heroic tradition. In the story of the "Miraculous she-deer", often believed to be a stag because of antlers, but she is clearly female and can be a reindeer, 2 brothers, founders of the leading clan of Magyars, find and marry in the Maeotis swamps the daughters of Kings Dul & Belar. The first obviously stands for the Bolgar ruling dynasty Dulo, and the second can hardly be anything other than Bolgar/Bulgar.

Fig. 6: Magyars have crossed R. Don. Are they in alliance with Khazars? Has already Mangyars remained behind? c. 700. Some Bolgars fleed Khazars to Lower Danube (Asparuch, 681), but that region is not on the map.

Fig. 7: 900 AD. Magyars in the Carpathian Basin. Some Bolgars fleed Khazars and established Volga Bolgaria. Some group relative to Magyars seems to be near to Volga Bolgaria, are they Mangyars?

After 900 AD the main Uralic changes are as follows: Mangyars die out; also some smaller Finnish languages (Merya, Muroma &c.).

These maps cannot explain the Magyar-Permian Finn common denasalisation + voicing. Maybe the explanation will be more involved. Or maybe there is no explanation, and the coincidence is an accident. But then why the results are so similar?

Questions of origin are emotional, therefore they are attracting persons writing not with their neocortex in the brain but with their hearts. Here I wanted to avoid this, so I tried to use orthodox high quality scholarship as sources. The great majority of Hungarian books are from the Editorial House of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Akadémiai Kiadó), or University textbooks (Tankönyvkiadó), in both cases peer refereed.

[1] L. L. Cavalieri-Sforza: PNAS 94, 7718 (1997)

[2] B. Lukács: Outline of History of the Carpathian Basin. http://www.rmki.kfki.hu/~lukacs/hungaria.htm

[3] C. Tacitus: Germania. In Corn. Taciti opera omnia, Teubner, Leipzig, 1961-65

[4] Kálmán B.: Chrestomathia Vogulica. Tankönyvkiadó, Budapest, 1976.

[5] E. Szentpétery: Scriptores rerum Hungaricarum tempore ducum regumque stirpis Arpadinae gestarum. Budapestini, 1938., Vol. 2, p. 535

[6] Gyôrffy Gy.: Krónikáink és a magyar ôstörténet. Budapest, 1948., p. 81

[7] Tardy L.: A tatárországi rabszolgakereskedelem és a magyarok a XIII-XV. században. Akadémiai, Budapest, 1980.

[8] HHStA, Wien, PA I. 937. Krieg 19 b., Kriegsministerium, Abt. 10. Nr. 11413/res/15 an Min. d. Aussern (3. 3. 1915)

[9] E. G. Perodi: Studi liguri. In: Archivio glottologico italiano XIV. Roma-Torino-Firenze, 1896-8, 6.

[10] Bratianu G. I.: Actes des notaires génois de Péra et de Caffa de la fin du treizième siècle. 1281-1290. Bucharest, 1927. The 178th Acta.

[11] Rédei K.: Nyelvtud. Közl. 66, 253 (1964)

[12] Hajdú P.: Bevezetés az uráli nyelvtudományba. Tankönyvkiadó, Budapest, 1966.

[13] Munkácsi B.: Árja és kaukázusi elemek a finn-magyar nyelvekben. Budapest, 1901.

[14] Harmatta I.: Irániak és finnugorok, irániak és magyarok. In: Magyar ôstörténeti tanulmányok, eds. Bartha A. & al., Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 1977., p. 167

[15] Gulya J.: Megjegyzések az ugor ôshaza és az ugor nyelvek szétválása kérdésérôl. In: Magyar ôstörténeti tanulmányok, eds. Bartha A. & al., Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 1977., p. 115

[16] D. Sinor: J. Soc. Finno-ougrienne 72, 392 (1973)

[17] Bárczy G.: A magyar nyelv életrajza. Gondolat, Budapest, 1966.

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