located at http://www.paabo.ca/uirala/index.html

UI-RA-LA: The Ancient World of Boat Peoples, by Andres Pääbo


A PROJECT OF ANDRES PÄÄBO
EXPLORING AND HIGHLIGHTING THE UNTOLD EARLY STORY OF NORTHERN PEOPLES WITH A WAY OF LIFE ON WATER
(this site is written, edited and maintained by Andres Pääbo)
ABOUT THIS PROJECT

This web project began when I saw images of the amazing rock carvings found at both Lake Onega and Alta Norway made, they say, perhaps more than 6000years ago. They show images of people in small skin boats with animal heads (like the three person moosehead boat) and large skin boats that have the head on the prow but are now made from many skins. The  second illustration above is from the Lake Onega carvings, In addition carvings there and elsewhere will show a person standing all alone in what is obviously a dugout canoe such as still made sometimes by traditional Khanty on the Ob River. Obviously trees in the arctic were small and a one man dugout was all that could be managed. If they wished to harvest the ocean they had to invent a skin boat and I think that the small three man moosehead boats were an actualy moose, hollowed out and smoke-dried till as hard as dried meat or skin. These carvings demonstrated a link between Lake Onega and arctic Norway - clearly these boat people travelled considerably.  The fact that White Sea carvings show the large moosehead boat catching a whale, suggest that the culture began in the south where there were moose, and before that further south where the Kunda Culture was - a Maglemose descended culture that harvested large mammals in the Baltic Sea.  I became interested in the progress of these peoples - to the White Sea, over top, and also probably accessing arctic Norway from the interior - coming up the rivers from the Gulf of Bothnia.  Following them, I found myself quickly in the Canadian arctic where the Inuit (Eskimos) have the large umiak skin boats, The small one man dugour evidently became the kayak. Traditional umiaks had walrus heads on the prow - reflecting a tradition of honouring the animal from whom the skin was taken.  My journey also led me south, into the northern British Isles, where the skin boat called curragh was found - with an oxhead on the prow, as late as the 17th century. Did these people go further south? Perhaps they did. Perhaps they became the source of Atlantian legends. Perhaps from them developed the people who made megalithic constructions up and down the Atlantic coast.While one  journey led me to follow intrepid skin boat people to North America and to the Pacific (perhaps by going the other way over Siberia), another journey made me wonder about the impacts of these people on the European civilization., Surely people with boats would be curious to ride the waters down the Dneiper, Volga, Vistula, Oder, Rhine, Rhone, Danube...Finding sedentary civilizations down there, they would have traded and some would have continued to do so, becoming professional traders. Some would have stayed and become part of the trading world down there - and that led me to wonder about the many instances of the name VENETI in the ancient writings. The words by Finnic language seemed to be plural of boat, or 'something pertaining to water' and could interpret easily as 'boat people' or 'people of  watercrafts' or something similar. But scholars were not thinking in terms of traders at all. The Veneti were a mystery. The Adriatic Veneti had left behind inscriptions of their language. Maybe they were a Finnic language indicative or a northern origin? I then noticed that the Adriatic Veneti were at the southern terminus of  two major trade routes carrying amber from the north. That provided a direct link. If amber came down for a millenium, the language in the south would have been kept in line with that in the north, and not diverge as fast as if there was no connection. The genetics of the peoples at the south really did not matter anymore. The language was a trade language, a lingua franca. Was the early trade language of the tradeways of early Europe of a Finnic character. It might be, if the traders were derived from the north - those notherners were preadapted to long journeys on rivers in boats. Thus I became sidetracked by these questions and that led me to interpret the Veneti inscriptions and document it in a book.  What I have discovered and present has made these articles very heavily visited, and scholars already considering oceanic crossings to North America have sent supportive emails.   Andres Pääbo  (rev. Nov 09)

THE DESCRIPTIONS IN THE MENU BELOW CAN SERVE AS A VERY GOOD OVERVIEW OF THE OVERALL THEORY,  AND SOMEONE NEW TO THE THEORY  WISH TO READ ALL THE DESCRIPTIONS TO GRASP HOW THEY ALL FIT INTO AN OVERALL THEORY ABOUT THE EVOLUTION AND IMPACTS THAT ULTIMATELY BEGAN WITH THE CREATION OF A WAY OF LIFE INVOLVING BOATS.
 

 - OVERVIEW OF THE THEORY AND MENU - 


A. FROM THE ICE AGE TO PREHISTORY - ABORIGINAL BOAT PEOPLES - UINI>"FINNI"


THE MAIN THEORY>>  THE ORIGINS AND EXPANSIONS OF  BOAT-ORIENTED WAYS OF LIFE : Basic Introduction to the Theory

Although humans were smart enough to devise rafts to cross bodies of water we are not by nature water-creatures; thus the evolution of a part of humanity into a life using boats and getting around on water could not have occurred spontaneously just anywhere. It had to have occurred in a place where there was no other alternative where survival depended on it. Through natural selection those groups who devised the best ways of dealing with the watery environment were the ones who produced the largest populations and flourished. The following presents the basic theory by Andres Pääbo about the appearance and expansions of a boat-oriented way of life that marks an early stage in the evolution of Europe after the Ice Age. This side of the European past has never before been told, because traditionally scholars have focussed on the evolution of farming and sedentary civilizations particularly in the Indo-European tradition. The focus here is on the Atlantic side, including likely North Atlantic crossings, but there is evidence that peoples from the same origins entered Siberia and the Pacific. The views of human expansions via boat, and not just by walking over land bridges, is not new, but is gaining acceptance among academics who are finding connections between Eurasia and North America.

o Related Supplementary  Articles  
o FINNO-UGRIC LANGUAGES:  Origins in the Aboriginal Languages of Prehistoric Europe

The traditional views on the Finno-Ugric languages (Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, etc) were developed in the late 1800's with no evidence other than linguistic distances, and since then other fields of science like archeology and genetics has failed to support the traditional theory of a tight origina and migrations of tight-knit groups. When the question is viewed fresh, using all the information now available in 2006, a different picture emerges, that suggests the Finno-Ugric cultures are remnants of the original hunter-fisher people of Europe, and that in continental Europe they were all lost due to cultural replacement. In other words the language of the original dugout boat hunter-fishers that emerged from the archeological Maglemose Culture out of flooded northern Europe around 10,000-6,000 BC can be viewed as generally "Uralic" but more specifically "Proto-Finno-Ugric". The out-of-Uralic-Europe theory has been promoted and publicized by Finnish linguist Kalevi Wiik.

  o UINI- UENNE - UENETI: Are Ancient Boat People identifiable by Names?

This article is more of a novelty as it only contemplates the origins of the names of many Finnic peoples today and even the historic "Veneti" name, and even notes "Inuit" and "Innu" in northeastern North America where the theory suggests some skin boat voyageurs went. The The natural way of naming boat peoples is something like 'people of the water'; therefore, if boat people, once established expanded throughout the world, particularly in a circumpolar manner, it follows that the original name will have spread too. This article searches possible developments of an original UI-NU leading to words for 'people' in the Inuit and Algonquian languages, as well as the historic "Veneti"

PART TWO >> SEA-GOING SKIN BOATS AND OCEANIC EXPANSION: The Voyages of Whale Hunters.

The expansion of boat peoples occurred in two stages. The first stage was the expansion of the peoples of the dugout boats from Britain to the Urals around 10,000-6,000 BC.  At this stage there was no reason to venture into the open seas, and if there was reason, the forests provided large trees suitable for large dugouts that could withstand ocean waves. The new form of boat made with a skin on a frame, probably developed in the arctic where there was a great reason for venturing into the sea (waters warmed by warm Atlantic Drift reaching the Norwegian arctic), but trees too small for large dugouts. Thus I believe the skin boat was invented from someone having the brilliant idea of making a dugout from a moose carcass. From there the idea of ribs to hold a flimsy skin was born.  These sea-harvesters then developed their skin boats, hunted large sea mammals like whales, and spread around the arctic in their quest for seals, whales, and walrus, establishing cultures in the North American arctic, as suggested by circumpolar similarlities, including many basic words of Inuit language when compared to Finnic (origins of the whalers)

o Related Supplementary  Articles  
o EXPLAINING "LONGHOUSE FOUNDATIONS" ON LABRADOR COAST

The 1998 book "Farfarers" by Canadian author Farley Mowat proposed a completely new and original theory as to the  story behind the arrangement of rocks found by archeologists along the Canadian Labrador coast. He wrote that they had been walrus hunters originating in the northern British Isles, derived from the original native British he called "Albans". They had come in skin boats, he wrote and camped underneath their skin boats after turning them over onto rocks serving as foundations and low walls. Seasoned archeologists and historians instantly dismissed the theory as without any merit. Those foundations had been made by the native peoples, they said. In this article I look at the problem in the light of the story of the seagoing aboriginal peoples of the North Atlantic. (It is useful if you read the main article of PART TWO first for more background)

PART THREE >>  SOUTHWARD MIGRATIONS OF CIRCUMPOLAR SKIN-BOAT PEOPLES: Looking at Picts, Algonquians, and Pacific Coast Tribe

The circumpolar expansion places seagoing peoples with skin boats around the arctic; however there would always be those who out of curiosity, accident, or purpose ventured south along the coasts of the Atlantic and Pacific, giving birth to boat using peoples along these coasts, and in the interior. How do they compare to Finnic cultures? Due to mixing with other cultures, they would have acquired characteristics also of the other cultures with which they blended.


PART FOUR >>   THE VENETI TRADERS OF EARLY EUROPE A New Approach to an Old Question - The Veneti and Ancient Europe From the Point of View of Trade and Commerce

While the story of the boat people up to this point is that of hunter-fishers migrating everywhere, even crossing oceans to North America, the use of boats was more than just transportation. There was also trade. While in the beginning tribes exchanged goods, or shared what they had an excess of, when sedentary civilizations and settlements began to appear in southern and then central Europe, they created a static humanity tied to domesticated animals and crops.  Nomadic peoples who could travel for weeks along rivers or along coasts in boats, were pre-adapted for a role in connecting these static/sedentary peoples together.  The most obvious name for men who travelled down the major rivers carrying trade goods like furs and amber, would be 'boat people', and in their language it was something like UENED- (see supplementary article 2 under the main article above for an article on the names)  But peoples of other languages who recorded the name, did not know the generic meaning, so the name came to be seen as a name of a people. To some extent it was, when the colonies at the south terminus of the trade routes became strong and prominent, but the name was still fundamentally generic to Finnic ears, sounding analogous to today's "Shippers" or "truckers". The most predominant settlement area to have the Veneti identity was located in northern Italy and is referred to as the Adriatic Veneti. I noted that the two amber routes came down there, and that the chances were good that the language they recorded in inscriptions before the Roman era, were probably in a Finnic language if my theory was correct, and I was compelled to see if I could find that they were indeed Finnic in character. Although the basic interpreting went fast (less than a year) I spent years documenting the work in English for English readers, and sceptical scholars. The final incarnation can be reviewed at  HANDBOOK OF THE VENETI LANGUAGE. It is a side pursuit, and only tangential to the UIRALA theme and theory, and therefore the subject of the Veneti language will  be pursued from a separate webpage.



For questions or comments:







-- BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR --

HANDBOOK OF THE VENETI LANGUAGE - A NON-Indo-European Language
THIS RELATES TO THE THEORY OF FINNIC BOAT TRADITIONS DOMINATING THE WORLD OF TRADE IN EARLY PRE-ROMANEUROPE
Description: After finding firm support in the archeology and history for the theory advanced here, the author knew that all the theorizing in the world that the ancient 'Veneti' named references were derived from northern boat peoples, would mean little if it was not possible to find that the inscriptions made by the ancient 'Adriatic Veneti' of northern Italy were not analyzed from a Finnic perspective. Without being able to do this, the theory was speculation based only on a likely scenario. The author did so over a period of some 5-6 years and the analysis is documented in this book. it also has a number of general initial chapters expanding on the theory that the Veneti were 'Phoenicians of the Interior' so to speak.The theory presented is very controversial because it threatens alternative theories that the inscriptions are in an Indo-European language like Latin, Germanic, Celtic, etc. The author has found himself battling these established theories. The book ought to be considered a landmark work, though because for the first time in centuries looks at the inscriptions as an NON-Indo-European language,
CLICK HERE  FOR THE PAGE THAT IS DEVOTED TO THE BOOK AND ITS SPECIALIZED FOCUS(Popup - you will not lose this page)

-- ABOUT THE AUTHOR --
ANDRES PÄÄBO is best known as a Fine Artist of nature subject matter, but has been interested in the prehistoric past of northern aboriginal peoples, since he was about 20.  Please visit his main webpage presentation of the nature art that reflects the spirituality of the kinds of peoples who roamed the northern hemisphere as hunters and fishers in the natural earth

CLICK HERE  FOR A GALLERY OF THE ARTISTS WORK AND FURTHER BIO AND CONTACT INFORMATION(Popup - you will not lose this page)


Copyright Andres Pääbo 2002-2008 All Rights Reserved