2025/06/16 by Svenja Bonmann, Simon Fries · 4 voices
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Eurasian Exchange Networks #History #Linguistics #Linguistics and Cultural Studies #Linguistics and language evolution #Philosophy
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/1467-968x.12321
published in Transactions of the Philological Society 124(1), 29-52 (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 2025/06/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
Abstract The Xiōng‐nú were a tribal confederation who dominated Inner Asia from the third century BC to the second century AD. Xiōng‐nú descendants later constituted the ethnic core of the European Huns. It has been argued that the Xiōng‐nú spoke an Iranian, Turkic, Mongolic or Yeniseian language, but the linguistic affiliation of the Xiōng‐nú and the Huns is still debated. Here, we show that linguistic evidence from four independent domains does indeed suggest that the Xiōng‐nú and the Huns spoke the same Paleo‐Siberian language and that this was an early form of Arin, a member of the Yeniseian language family. This identification augments and confirms genetic and archaeological studies and inspires new interdisciplinary research on Eurasian population history.