Mongoloids or Europeans?

[uzbek_traveller]

WHom do yuo fins(?) consider yuorselves?are yuo europeans or mongoloids?IS that true that you are a mrelative nation to turkic people?

[daryl]

WHom do yuo fins(?) consider yuorselves?are yuo europeans or mongoloids?IS that true that you are a mrelative nation to turkic people?

My understanding is that the Finnish language is Uralic but most of the population are of North German extraction. This has the interesting consequence that most members of the Finnish populace (the tribes of Finland, if you like) are descended from immigrants (i.e. outsiders who entered the tribes and adopted their language etc.) and are not aboriginal.

Of course this could be a distortion and I fully expect howls of protest. The problem is that the Finnish language comes from roots in Central Asia but the Finnish people somehow got a genetic profile that comes from North Germany. What other reasonable theory could reconcile these facts?

daryl

[chickensexer]

Really??? Daryl, where does that information come from?

I'm totally amazed... Learn something knew every day.

[rinso]

Daryl is probably right. Found this:
http://www.mankindquarterly.org/samples ... finland%22

[Hank W.]

As what comes to calling me a "mongoloid"...

You want your privates chopped off *before* your are dead or *after*?

I think inner mongolians prefer the first and the outer mongolians the latter

(Calling Finnish a 'mongol' is about the same as calling a Russian 'caucasian'... you wake up being manhandled by the Huns )

[daryl]

Really??? Daryl, where does that information come from?

I'm totally amazed... Learn something new every day.

Why is this so amazing? Most Finns are superficially similar in appearance to Swedes and North Germans, and different from most Sámi. Sámi are generally understood to be an aboriginal people with a traditional mode of livelihood.

The following page explains the genetic side of the equation in a rather different way, arguing that the North Germans changed their language, while the modern Finns did not:

http://finnpro2000.tripod.com/vanhin.htm

Most of the argument is in the first couple of paragraphs:

1980-luvulla aloitettu Euroopan kansojen mitokondrion DNA:n kartoitus päätyi yleiseurooppalaiseen geeniperheeseen, eli kaikki Euroopan kansat, kahta lukuunottamatta (saamelaiset ja baskit), osoittautuivat perimältään sukulaisiksi. "Eurooppalaisista" irlantilaiset ovat meistä kauimpana, hollantilaiset, ruotsalaiset ja virolaiset lähimpänä. Voimme siis sanoa kuuluvamme kansaan, jonka etniteetti on muotoutunut tässä maanosassa, ja joka on säilyttänyt jatkuvuuden alkuperäiseen kieleensä. Voimme pitää itseämme alkuperäisasukkaina. Kielitieteen termejä, indoeurooppalainen, uralilainen jne, ei nykyisin käytetä tieteellisessä keskustelussa käsiteltäessä ihmispopulaatioiden biologista perimää. Geneettiset etäisyydet osoittavat että itämerensuomalaiset ovat lähempänä ruotsalaisia kuin kielellisiä sukulaisiaan volgansuomalaisia mareja ja permansuomalaisia komeja. Mustalaiset ovat indoeurooppalaisia. Slaavit, baltit ja germaanit eivät ole geneettisiä kokonaisuuksia, ja ilmiöinä myöhempiä kuin suomalaisten geenipoolin muodostuminen. Se prosessi, joka loi germaanit, slaavit jne loi myös suomalaiset samoista aineksista. Meillä on poikkeuksena tallella (muuntuneena) alkuperäinen puhuttu kieli. Näillä muilla ei ole vaan he ovat vaihtaneet kielensä indoeurooppalais-suomalaisugrilaiseen sekakieleen vain joitain tuhat vuosi sitten.

Kaiken kaikkiaan suomalaiset osoittautuivat geneettisesti varsin yhtenäiseksi kansaksi. Selvitettäessä suomalaisten sukujuuria on vertailupohjana käytetty eri Euroopan kansojen mitokondriaalisen perimän monimuotoisuutta. Tulosten perusteella on pääteltävissä, että suomalaisten mitokondriaalinen DNA on hyvin samanlaista kuin muiden eurooppalaisten kansojen, niin suomalaisugrilaisten kuin indoeurooppalaisten. Mitokondriaalisen DNA:n tutkimukset tukevat siis olettamusta suomalaisten läntisestä, indoeurooppalaisesta geeniperimästä. Indoeurooppalainen geenikompleksi mainitaan jostain syystä läntiseksi, vaikka indoeurooppalaiset ovat kaukaa idästä muuttaneita paimentolaisia.

The underlying fact here is that people with a relatively recent common biological origin now belong to two groups, speaking either an Indoeuropean or a Uralic language. This implies that one or the other of these groups switched language at some point, since it is evident that neither of these language families is descended from the other within the relevant time frame.

I do not find it very credible that the North Germans and others switched language while the modern Finns did not, and the claim "voimme pitää itseämme alkuperäisasukkaina" (the Finns may consider themselves aboriginal residents) conveniently forgets the Sámi and indications that Finland was settled from the southwest corner. I suspect instead that the Sámi originally occupied all or most of Finland and that the modern Finns arrived later as immigrants, effectively squeezing the Sámi out of all parts of Finland in which agriculture was a more profitable means of livelihood than hunting-gathering or free-range animal husbandry. The modern Finnish language developed under these conditions. It is also conceivable that something similar happened in Estonia.

But to return to the original topic of the thread, the Finns are no less European than any other tribe in Central and Western Europe.

daryl

[Hank W.]

I think the distinction of 'lapp' in the olden times atleast was not as much a question of race/language/creed as it was of livelihood. It was a question of hunter/gatherer/herder vs. farmer cultures, though the "Finnish way" was a combination of both (esp. the slash/burn culture in Savo)

[Meri-Tuuli]

Seriously, I met this (Finnish) woman on Friday (about my job as a English speaking language assistant) and she looked, well I don't know, 'chinese' for lack of a better word, but with blonde hair and blue eyes.

There is definately a gene here in Finland for more oriental shaped eyes, but with blonde hair and blue eyes.....(just look at Miss Suomi 2006)

Perhaps it comes from the Sami peoples? I presume there must have been a fair amount of intermingling that occured...

BTW considering how egalitarian/PC etc Finland is, there isn't much talk of Sami people or anything like that.

[EP]

BTW considering how egalitarian/PC etc Finland is, there isn't much talk of Sami people or anything like that.

I don´t know what there would be to talk about. Finland´s biggest Sámi population lives in Helsinki. And at least in Lapland they nowadays get their education (not university level) in Sámi, that has not always been the case. BTW, when we still had news in Sámi on TV, I always watched it. It was fun to listen to something that sounds just like Finnish, and at the same time not understand a word.

I have a counter question: Hindi and Swedish (and English) are related languages. Are Swedes and Brits in fact Asian?

[Quin]

I might be wrong but i remember 2 fins telling me the following.

In the past a tribe migrated from the east to the west (could be mongolia or somewhere about there). At one point the tribe split up over hungaria and finland. Hence hungarian in some ways is very close to finnish and far from the germanic languages that are most prevelant in europe.

So that would explain the language and the 'slavic' looks or whatever you wanna call it. That so many finns look 'european' is easily explained as they mixed with swedes etc while they where one empire so alot got more 'european' look.

2 seperate people at different times told me this. Never really researched it but it sounds pretty valid in my book.

[Hank W.]

All the tribes migrated from the east to the west at some point and time. They just migrated in waves. Nobody knows for sure what language the stone-age peoples spoke, but in the area of Finland there was the comb-ceramic and hammer-axe cultures that weren't anything according to any modern national boundaries.

"Finnish tribes" are also a very ambiguous term, but one can say by the viking age there were a few distinct pockets of population with distinct cultural traits, say like the Karelians and Tavastians - but nobody can say Finns "came" here. I'd say "peoples came here" and "became Finns".

[Hank W.]

Are Swedes and Brits in fact Asian?

But of course they are, just look at Korv-Görans kebab - and in the UK you get curry everywhere! I think the Brits moved from the Indian subcontinent, you know they speak English there!!!

[kay30]

Seriously, I met this (Finnish) woman on Friday (about my job as a English speaking language assistant) and she looked, well I don't know, 'chinese' for lack of a better word, but with blonde hair and blue eyes.

A few women in my family have the Asian-looking thing going, myself included. When I was small, people used to ask me constantly if I was part Chinese, even though I had dark blonde hair and blue eyes. When I look at my Asian friends, my eyes resemble theirs far more than my European friends.

What is even stranger is that it seems to be random, my cousins/grandparents don't have it, but the women in my immediate family do.

Far as I am concerned, there is some Eastern/Asian influence in my family, for sure.

[sy]

Several years ago there was a documentary about Chinese working for the fortress building around Helsinki at the turn of 1900s. The Czar had brought tens of thousands of Chinese from Manchuria to build the fortress around Helsinki. Nowadays you can still find those fortress sites roughly along the current Ring I.

At that time, half of the population in Sipoo were Chinese, IIRC about 3000 Chinese there. Surely those Chinese have left some descendants. At the end of that documentary it mentioned that some Finns having these Chinese facial features are the descendants of those people.

[Hank W.]

Nice theory, but as the 3000 odd chinese were carted in in 1916 and carted out in 1917 I don't think there was too much time for descending. Maybe their kirghiz or cossac guards got lucky, but as there were thousands od men around working on battlements, even with the reputation of loose Finnish women I don't think the gene pool got that mixed in that short a time.


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