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The European Origin of the Finns and their Relation to the Indo-Europeans
Kyosti Julku
Published: 2002/12/01
Abstract
The author traces the history of the prevailing hypothesis which assumes that the ancestors of the present-day Finns and Estonians migrated into their contemporary north European homeland as recently as two thousand years ago. Instead, he suggests that during the latter part of the Würm glaciation, more than ten thousand years ago, when northern Europe was still covered by ice, they and the Saami (Suomi) were hunters and fishers who occupied an area between the Danube and the Ukraine. They subsequently followed the retreating ice northwards into the eastern Baltic, as that area became habitable. His theory, which is regarded as controversial, would see Finno-Ugrian speakers inhabiting northern Europe before Indo-European speaking farmers displaced them in Northern Germany and western Scandinavia.
