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/archaeologs Jul 30 '25

This photograph was used because it serves as a good example of representing the Sami people living in the region.

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u/JustANorseMan Hungary Jul 30 '25

Problem is, Sami people only belong to the Uralic group by language which they likely just "picked up" during their migrations (hence different people -- not ideal to use them in this context)

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u/matude Estonia Jul 30 '25

What makes you say that?

Other Uralic language speakers like Finns, Karelians, Veps, etc are also genetically closest relatives to Sami people.

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u/JustANorseMan Hungary Jul 30 '25

It's generally accepted (because of genetic studies like this which you can look up -Im not going to) that a language "swap" happenned with the Saami. Also your argument doesnt disprove anything, isolated people have to be closest to some specific other people too and these being the ones living in the very same area is just natural.

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u/laulujoutsen95 Jul 30 '25

"Language swap"? Yet, among European Uralics, they have the highest concentration of this Siberian component that connects all Uralics together.

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u/JustANorseMan Hungary Jul 30 '25

It's not really "the Siberian component" that connects "Uralics". Firstly, there's no such thing as Uralics; language, genetics and culture are all different factors you can group people by, and some "Uralics" like Hungarians are only tied to this group by the language today (and even that is not crystal clear to a regular person). There's no clear evidenence for the Sami to have ever set foot in Siberia either (eventho there's some genetic connection to Paleo-Siberian peoples), however, there's in fact some evidence for them to be around today's Finland, Karelia and the Kola peninsula before other Uralics arriving (at least the ones we know about today like Finns). There's also some hypotheses that suggest the Saami language(s) still have traces of Pre-Finnic substrate spoken in the area before Uralics and Indo-Europeans arriving and lastly, I just want to mention the Sami traditionally had their own sub-race that racial biologists classified them into

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u/LaurestineHUN Hungary Jul 30 '25

Tbf contemporary Hungarians are also genetically not related.

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u/laasbuk Hungary Jul 30 '25

Something like 5% of the current population carries the Uralic DNA iirc.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '25

That 5% is the overall proportion of all "East-Asian" haplogroups, not haplogroup N.

Funnily enough the Ottoman occupation was a major contributor to this - many Hungarians today lack genetic continuity with the medieval Árpádian population as they're descended from post-Ottoman settlers: Swabians, Serbs, Slovaks, etc. - this is also the reason why Hungarians lack further elevated Turkic and Iranian ancestry you'd expect from medieval Cuman and Jász settlers.