Mikes International - Hollandiai Magyar Szövetség

VIII. évfolyam, 2. szám Mikes International Volume VIII., Issue 2.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
However, since Brunner (1969) found 1030 common Semitic-IE roots, one has to assume that either the Indo-Europeans
also originate in the African continent as the Semites do or that the Semites originate in an area further East that was also
inhabited by Indo-Europeans. Because neither 3.1. nor 3.2. can explain the huge typological difference of Akkadian, Amorite
and Rhaetic (cf. Tóth and Brunner 2007) and since the Anatolian hypothesis is the only IE theory supported by archaeology,
we have to assume that the Semites also come from Asia.
4. The Altaic Urheimat
Unlike in many other language families, it is commonly assumed that the Altaic Urheimat is Central Asia: “Als
Zentralheimat möchte ich diesem als ‘Turkvolk’ differenzierten Völkerzweig speziell das Tarimbecken und die Gobi, dann das
zentrale Tiën-Schaan-Gebiet und die heutige Kirgisensteppe zuweisen, kurz so ziemlich dasselbe Gebiet, welches schon seit
geraumer Zeit von den Nachbarvölkern als Turkestan, als das Turkland kat’ exochen bezeichnet wird” (Almásy 1978, p. 267).
Proto-Altaic is assumed to have been “spoken” around 6000-4000 B.C. (Starostin/Dybo/Mudrak 2003), thus in a time-frame
that coincides approximately with the Anatolian Proto-IE theory and is compatible with Brunner’s assumption of a common
IE-Semitic origin.
5. The Uralic/Finno-Ugric Urheimat
5.1. According to Hungarian mythology, the Hungarian homeland is Mesopotamia. Since from the Mesopotamian
languages only Akkadian was known to exist before the 19th century and understandable only after its deciphering by
Grotefend and his successors in the late 19th century, and since Sumerian came to be known thus even later than Akkadian did,
early attempts to trace back Hungarian were done by comparing it to Hebrew and Arabic (Otrokocsi Fóris 1706, Beregszászi
1796, Kiss 1839, Giesswein 1887/88). Therefore, the first hypothesis about Hungarian Urheimat was Semitic Mesopotamia.
5.2. Still before the Finno-Ugric theory was established and Hungarian thus connected with Finnic, Estonian and especially
the Obugric languages, Vámbéry (1882, 1895) considered Hungarian to be a member of the Turkic language family, partially
in accordance with the information of the Byzantine and Arabic Middle Ages chroniclers. The Turkic theory was resumed by
Sára (1994, 1996, 1999) and implies of course, that Hungarian is a member of the Altaic family forming together with the
Finno-Ugric family the Ural-Altaic macrofamily as it was commonly assumed until late in the 20th century and is partly still
today. Therefore, in accordance with the already mentioned Altaic theory, the Hungarian homeland is also Turkestan.
5.3. Varga (1942), Bobula (1951, 1970), Csőke (1969, 1970), Gostony (1975), Tóth (2007a, b) and many others went back
to the Hungarian mythology and used the huge progresses that Sumerian linguistics has made since the end of the 19th century
and established the Sumerian-Hungarian theory, thus like the Semitic-Hungarian theory stipulating Mesopotamia as Hungarian
Urheimat. Amongst the adherents of this version of original homeland are the ones who deny and the ones who conform with
the existence of a Finno-Ugric language family. According to Décsy: “The Common Finno-Ugric Language was spoken, it is
generally surmised, between 4000-3000 B.C. in the watershed area of the rivers Kama and the Eastern Dvina west of the Uralic
Mountains” (2006, p. 1). But Décsy (loc. cit.) assumes that the Uralic proto-language had only about 500 words, Rédei’s Uralic
dictionary contains ca. 720, from which only 140 are also Samoyed (Doerfer 2000, p. 30). This makes about 20% for Samoyed
plus FU to form an alleged Uralic family. For Proto-FU, Budenz counted 996, Lakó and Rédei (1967-78) 677 and Décsy
(2006) 1160 words. On the other side, the “Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages” of Starostin, Dybo and Mudrak
(2003) contains 2800 common Turkish-Mongolian-Manchu-Korean roots and the “Comparative Vocabulary of Five Sino-
Tibetan Languages” of Peiros and Starostin (1996) 2637 common Old Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese, Jingpo and Lushai roots.
Furthermore, it was proved in Tóth (2007c) that the FU languages share less then 30% of cognates, the Samoyed in accordance
with the guessing of Doerfer even less then 20% and thus the whole Uralic family less then 25%. This can mean two things:
Either Proto-Uralic split about 10’000 years ago, which contradicts entirely the assumptions of Uralists and Finno-Ugrists, or
there is no Finno-Ugric/Uralic language family. The decision is clear: There is no Finno-Ugric or Uralic language family, cf.
also Marcantonio (2002). Gostony (1975) has 1042, HMD (Tóth 2007b) 1317 common Sumerian-Hungarian cognates and thus
the double amount of Lakó and Rédei (1967-78). Since there is no FU or Uralic family, the question about the Homeland is in
vain, may it be on the East Side of the Uralic Mountains (Honti 2002), on the West Side (Hajdú 1975), on the Northern part of
the West Side (Hajdú 1967), in the Balticum (Janhunen 1999) or even consist in a “chain of Urheimaten”, one of them also in
the North-West of Siberia, as Pusztay (1995, p. 124s.) assumed.
6. Conclusion
From the 1020 common Semitic-IE roots in Brunner (1969) it follows that Semites and Indo-Europeans have the same
Urheimat. Amongst the many diverging hypotheses about IE origin only the Anatolian theory accords with archaeology. It
_____________________________________________________________________________________
© Copyright Mikes International 2001-2008 90