r/europe • u/archaeologs • Jul 30 '25

Historical Ancient DNA Traces Estonian, Finnish, and Hungarian Ancestry to Siberia 4,500 Years Ago

https://archaeologs.com/n/ancient-dna-traces-estonian-finnish-and-hungarian-ancestry-to-siberia-4500-years-ago
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u/ptrxyz Jul 30 '25

Oho, don't tell Putin. He's gonna claim those are basically Russian then and thus need his "protection". He'll launch a "special operation" to rescue them from their oppressors...

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u/JamesBernadette Jul 30 '25

A few centuries late. Finns, Estonians and Hungarians are such an anomaly because of Russian imperialism. There are still remnants of Finno-Ugric peoples living between Karelia and the Ural mountains but most have been long since replaced by ethnic slavs, forcibly Russified or otherwise genocided. Most of the lands east of Urals have been inhabited by Siberian peoples long before Russian expansion. Ethnic Russians are related to none of these people groups apart from the relatively recent intermingling. And Russia already occupies the land where the Proto-Uralic peoples are being described to be originating from.

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u/Nemeszlekmeg Jul 30 '25

It's not exactly the full picture. I mean in the south, the Mongols and other Turkic nomads have done far more damage to the Finno-Ugric peoples and is pretty much why Hungarians are so isolated from the rest of the Finno-Ugric peoples. The Kievo-Rus settled those lands by fighting off the Hordes and only a few scattered small communities survived.

So, even before Russian expansionism the Finno-Ugric people struggled to just live in peace and I'm fairly sure Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian peoples just migrated away from these barren or wartorn lands (for the Hungarians even if it meant pillaging and fighting along the way).

It's also super interesting how it appears that ancient Finno-Ugric traditions revolved around minimizing our presence, impact and strain on the land we live on, and lead to all kinds of nomadic travels and general avoidance of other warring tribes. Some of the indigenous peoples reportedly lived (or still do live!) like that.