Are Huns and Mongols Related?

TheLastOne36 · Jul 9, 2012

Veles said:
Other than 'for teh lulz', it coulda given us general info on thier ethnicity. Of course it's all vague and stuff, but there *are* differences in Indo-European, Finnic, Turkic and Mongolic haplogroups.

Which were probably more prominent back then too.

Probably not quite relevant but before the modern era, it was common belief in Poland that Poles were descendents from the Scythians and Sarmatians.

schlaufuchs · Jul 9, 2012

Louis XXIV said:
I'm surprised no one has tried to collect DNA in that case and attempt to create a genetic profile.

Veles said:
Other than 'for teh lulz', it coulda given us general info on thier ethnicity. Of course it's all vague and stuff, but there *are* differences in Indo-European, Finnic, Turkic and Mongolic haplogroups.

TheLastOne36 said:
Which were probably more prominent back then too.

Probably not quite relevant but before the modern era, it was common belief in Poland that Poles were descendents from the Scythians and Sarmatians.

Now where's that Masada post explaining why this is a pointless line of research to follow...

Dachs · Jul 9, 2012

Veles said:
Other than 'for teh lulz', it coulda given us general info on thier ethnicity. Of course it's all vague and stuff, but there *are* differences in Indo-European, Finnic, Turkic and Mongolic haplogroups.

Differences which have nothing to do with ethnicity or identity.

Owen Glyndwr said:
Now where's that Masada post explaining why this is a pointless line of research to follow...

Masada post?

Veles · Jul 9, 2012

Dachs said:
Differences which have nothing to do with ethnicity or identity.

Objection. It does have a lot to do with both. While it doesn't tell it indisputably, it still allows us to make certain conclusions on ethnicity, especially if there's a series of such tombs. Say, if they are ~70% haplogroup "I", this are more probably Finnics than Mongols. Well, let's agree to disagree here.

How did they know those were Hunnic tombs in the first place anyway? If we have little to no evidence of Hunnic material culture or buring/burning rituals? Since it's freaking Pannonian plain how did they tell it apart form Celts or Germanics or Slavs or Avars or Magyars?

Dachs · Jul 9, 2012

Veles said:
Objection. It does have a lot to do with both. While it doesn't tell it indisputably, it still allows us to make certain conclusions on ethnicity, especially if there's a series of such tombs. Say, if they are ~70% haplogroup "I", this are more probably Finnics than Mongols. Well, let's agree to disagree here.

"Finnic" and "Mongol" weren't meaningful layers of identity in the fifth century. All that it would seem this would do is allow nationalists from Modern Country X to lay some sort of historical claim to Hunnic connections or whatever.

Veles said:
How did they know those were Hunnic tombs in the first place anyway? If we have little to no evidence of Hunnic material culture or buring/burning rituals? Since it's freaking Pannonian plain how did they tell it apart form Celts or Germanics or Slavs or Avars or Magyars?

I kind of already made this point, although with less hyperbole.

Louis XXIV · Jul 10, 2012

Dachs said:
What use would that be?

That's certainly up for debate, but some anthropologists think it's useful. I just said it's surprising they haven't tried, especially since there isn't much else to go on. I didn't mean to suggest an opinion as to how useful it would be.

classical_hero · Jul 10, 2012

Everyone is related to each in some form, just the matte of how close that relationship is.

Masada · Jul 10, 2012

Louis XXIV said:
That's certainly up for debate, but some anthropologists think it's useful. I just said it's surprising they haven't tried, especially since there isn't much else to go on. I didn't mean to suggest an opinion as to how useful it would be.

How would we know that the people we used as a base 'were' even Huns?

TheLastOne36 · Jul 10, 2012

Masada said:
How would we know that the people we used as a base 'were' even Huns?

And even if they were 'Huns', are they the Huns we want to test? Instead of the Germanics, Slavs, Magyars, Finnics, Turkics that accompanied the Huns?

For genetic testing to be useful, we need a large number and variety of grave sites dated to the period across a large chunk of Europe.

Louis XXIV · Jul 10, 2012

Masada said:
How would we know that the people we used as a base 'were' even Huns?

You're right, but it'll still make for a potentially useful test. It depends on the results. Most will be inconclusive, but a couple could raise imaginative possibilities.

Masada · Jul 11, 2012

TheLastOne36 said:
And even if they were 'Huns', are they the Huns we want to test? Instead of the Germanics, Slavs, Magyars, Finnics, Turkics that accompanied the Huns?

I don't think 'Hun' and 'Turkic' or 'Slav' were mutually exclusive categories. The latter two being modern constructions.

Louis XXIV said:
You're right, but it'll still make for a potentially useful test. It depends on the results. Most will be inconclusive, but a couple could raise imaginative possibilities.

"Imaginative possibilities". What does that even mean and how would that even be useful?

Louis XXIV · Jul 11, 2012

An example would be a group of people not closely related to anyone else in Eastern Europe. For example, if their closest relatives were from western China or Mongolia (the subject of this thread). An outlier group is most easily explained by the Huns, while, certainly, a group that is not an outlier could still be the Huns, but it's harder to tell. I'm not saying it would lead to great results, but it's one of those things that you never know until you try and it's not like there's any chance of finding more information out through some other method.

Lord Baal · Jul 11, 2012

Louis XXIV said:
An example would be a group of people not closely related to anyone else in Eastern Europe. For example, if their closest relatives were from western China or Mongolia (the subject of this thread). An outlier group is most easily explained by the Huns, while, certainly, a group that is not an outlier could still be the Huns, but it's harder to tell. I'm not saying it would lead to great results, but it's one of those things that you never know until you try and it's not like there's any chance of finding more information out through some other method.

Short of genetic testing showing that they were Sioux, Australian Aborigines or Martians, what difference would it make? Even if they had Mongolian or Chinese ancestry, what does that prove? That some skeletons that might be of Huns had East Asian ancestry? It hardly shows that the leadership and the common folk were of the same stock, that they were typical or atypical of steppe peoples, that they were the Xiongnu, or anything else. It's not like no-one has ever made the trip from Turkestan to Pannonia.

Masada · Jul 11, 2012

Louis XXIV said:
An example would be a group of people not closely related to anyone else in Eastern Europe. For example, if their closest relatives were from western China or Mongolia (the subject of this thread). An outlier group is most easily explained by the Huns, while, certainly, a group that is not an outlier could still be the Huns, but it's harder to tell. I'm not saying it would lead to great results, but it's one of those things that you never know until you try and it's not like there's any chance of finding more information out through some other method.

So nothing?

Louis XXIV · Jul 11, 2012

Perhaps nothing. But I'm sure people with various theories would argue otherwise. Like I said, I'm not saying it would scientifically prove anything, just that it's surprising no one has tried it so they could argue that it does.

Masada · Jul 12, 2012

"Perhaps"? Considering all the issues that have been highlighted in this thread I think that's being generous.

Adjuvant · Jul 12, 2012

From my understanding, the Huns were a hodge-podge "culture" evolving from the veritable "melting pot" expanse of steppe nomadic tribes of "Scythia". They "probably" weren't well-understood via verbal communication because they likely spoke a dialect including "smatterings" of turkic and indo-iranian. Likely, they "appeared asiatic" in a modern sense; as a Kazakh more likely.

There were literally hundreds of such cultures, "grouped together" by historians of antiquity as "Scythians" or "Amyrgians" or "Sarmats". When or how one "confederation" attained dominance and initiated patterns of "mass human migration" isn't, and probably can't be, completely known.

Were they "related" to the Mongols"? I suppose if you go far enough back, everyone's related, but I really doubt they were "directly related". More than likely by Mongol times, the descendants of "Huns" were the "bullied, capitulated" tribes that formed the bulk of "Uralic" or "Golden" hordes.

king_dean · Jun 27, 2014

Same people, different names is all.

Scythians => Huns => Mongols => Russians

schlaufuchs · Jun 27, 2014

king_dean said:
Same people, different names is all.

Scythians => Huns => Mongols => Russians

=>British=>Germans=>French=>Americans=>Bantu=>Arequipa=>Mixtec...?

Nobody's Scots though

Wrymouth3 · Jun 27, 2014

2 years, not bad, Jordanes is writing about this from his grave.

Are Huns and Mongols Related?

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