Breakthrough in present-day Uralistics

There is no doubt that today the Uralic linguistics is undergoing a major change. The proof of the fact comes from great breakthroughs in the sciences studying a human being, in general. First of all. the vigorous development of human genetics has to be mentioned. Secondly, the possibility of the spread of objects and patterns of activity rather than a considerable population migration should be considered. The third change consists in the status of a language: a linguistic majority transferring to a more prestigeous language of a linguistic minority. Fourthly, a decisive role of language contacts related to linguistic changes has been emphasized. Linguistic affinity, in principle, is no other than the assimilation of more or less different languages, whereas an intermediary of a lingua franca type can be of help. The fifth change involves the correction by means of calibration of the results in dating archaeological finds, based on the radiocarbon 14C analysis. The book is trying to show not only the problematics of Uralic languages' origin but to retell a little about the background of the problems from the point of view of nature, human genetics, archaeology etc. as well as about the Uralic - Siberian non-Uralic and Uralic-Indo-European linguistic similarities.