Kaino Kalevi Wiik (2 August 1932,

Turku Turku ( ; ; , ) is a city in Finland and the regional capital of Southwest Finland. It is located on the southwestern coast of the country at the mouth of the Aura River (Finland), River Aura. The population of Turku is approximately , while t ...

— 12 September 2015, Turku) was a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians ...

at the

University of Turku The University of Turku (, shortened ''UTU'') is a multidisciplinary public university with eight faculties located in the city of Turku in southwestern Finland. The university also has campuses in Rauma and Pori and research stations in Kevo ...

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

. He was best known for his controversial hypothesis about the effect of the

Uralic The Uralic languages ( ), sometimes called the Uralian languages ( ), are spoken predominantly in Europe and North Asia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian. Other languages with speakers abo ...

contact influence on the creation of various

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...

protolanguages in

Northern Europe The northern region of Europe has several definitions. A restrictive definition may describe northern Europe as being roughly north of the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, which is about 54th parallel north, 54°N, or may be based on other ge ...

such as Germanic, Slavic, and Baltic. He also based much of his hypothetical structures on results of genetics of his time. Ludomir R. Lozny states, "Wiik's controversial ideas are rejected by the majority of the scholarly community, but they have attracted the enormous interest of a wider audience."

Hypothesis

Wiik proposed Indo-European origins in

Southeast Europe Southeast Europe or Southeastern Europe is a geographical sub-region of Europe, consisting primarily of the region of the Balkans, as well as adjacent regions and Archipelago, archipelagos. There are overlapping and conflicting definitions of t ...

by using linguistic, genetic, archaeological and anthropological data to support his hypotheses. He believed that from 23,000 to 8000 BC (the last

ice age An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages, and g ...

), inhabitation in Europe was in three main regions during the

Last Glacial Maximum The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), also referred to as the Last Glacial Coldest Period, was the most recent time during the Last Glacial Period where ice sheets were at their greatest extent between 26,000 and 20,000 years ago. Ice sheets covered m ...

, and their populations then came to divide Europe between themselves. Western 'Basque' Europe and Northern 'Uralic' Europe were inhabited by hunters of large animals that were abundant. The people spoke languages related respectively to modern

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...

and Uralic. The rest of Europe was inhabited by hunters of smaller animals and fragmented into many smaller unknown languages. By 5500 BC, the extinction of many large species of animals reduced the inhabitants of

Western Europe Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's extent varies depending on context. The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the Western half of the ancient Mediterranean ...

and

to hunting small game. The inhabitants of South-East Europe (hypothesised to have spread from the

Balkans The Balkans ( , ), corresponding partially with the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throug ...

) had adopted the Neolithic way of life of mixed farming and animal husbandry and were becoming economically more successful. Early farmers diffusing from

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

and the Balkans gave rise to Indo-European, serving as a lingua franca of the inhabitants of region and displacing or gradually converting linguistically the less successful hunters from the other regions. Wiik suggests that at the periphery of the Indo-European language expansion, the Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Celtic and Iberian languages developed; they were Indo-European mixed with many elements from the languages of the hunters: Basque and Uralic. He claims the Post-Swiderian people (originating from western Poland) as Finnic-Ugric, and the

Saami The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute (SAAMI, pronounced "Sammy") is an association of American manufacturers of firearms, ammunition, and components. SAAMI is an accredited standards developer that publishes several A ...

as migrants from (Magdalenian) Western Europe who changed their original language, probably Basque-like, to a Uralic tongue. Thus, Wiik proposes that eventually most of Europe was Indo-Europeanized as many of the Basque and Uralic speaking hunters adopted Indo-European languages. Only in the periphery of the European continent, in Iberia and in Northeastern Europe strong nuclei of hunters apparently adopted farming without being linguistically converted: their descendants are Basque- and Finnish-speakers. Everywhere else, the Indo-European languages have won the upper hand. The key proposition in Wiik's hypothesis is the phonetically-derived idea that the Finnic-Ugric and Basque populations who adopted the fashionable Indo-European language replaced their own new language but used pronunciations in a way familiar to their birth language, which all gave rise to the new language. In essence, Wiik suggests that Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, Celtic and

Iberian Iberian refers to Iberia. Most commonly Iberian refers to: *Someone or something originating in the Iberian Peninsula, namely from Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar and Andorra. The term ''Iberian'' is also used to refer to anything pertaining to the fo ...

did not emerge from Indo-Europeans themselves but from the Finnic-Ugric and Proto-Basque populations. That would make the Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, Celtic and Iberian populations genetically as descendants not of Indo-European but of Finnic-Ugric and Proto-Basque respectively, a claim not fully supported by any genetic evidence. In “Where Did European Men Come From,”Wiik, Kalevi
Where Did European Men Come From.
''Journal of Genetic Genealogy'', 4:35-85, 2008) Wiik surveyed

Y chromosome The Y chromosome is one of two sex chromosomes in therian mammals and other organisms. Along with the X chromosome, it is part of the XY sex-determination system, in which the Y is the sex-determining chromosome because the presence of the ...

variation in Europeans and in accordance with his position: "The men of the Balkan refuge were more likely than those of any other to have spoken an early form of the Indo-European language."

Criticism

The possible linguistic substrate in Germanic seems to have nothing in common with Uralic languages, and there is no evidence for Uralic languages ever having been spoken in Central Europe, as opposed to Northern and Eastern Europe, where they were spoken.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wiik, Kalevi 1932 births 2015 deaths Academic staff of the University of Turku Linguists from Finland Phoneticians Recipients of the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana, 4th Class