Various Proto-Uralic homeland hypotheses on the origin of the Uralic languages and the location (Urheimat or homeland) and period in which the Proto-Uralic language was spoken have been advocated over the years.
Homeland hypotheses
Europe versus Siberia
It has been suggested that the Proto-Uralic homeland was located near the Ural Mountains, either on the European or the Siberian side. The main reason to suppose that there was a Siberian homeland has been the traditional taxonomic model that sees the Samoyedic branch as splitting off first. Because the present border between the Samoyedic and the Ugric branch is in Western Siberia, the original split was seen to have occurred there too.
However, because the Ugric languages are known to have been spoken earlier on the European side of the Urals, a European homeland would be equally possible. In recent years, it has also been argued on the basis of phonology that the oldest split was not between the Samoyedic and the Finno-Ugric but between the Finno-Permic and the Ugro-Samoyedic language groups. The lexical level is argued to be less reliable, and lexical innovativeness (a small number of shared cognates) can be confused because of the great age of the division. For a long time, no new arguments for a Siberian homeland have been presented.
Both European and Siberian homeland proposals have been supported by palaeolinguistic evidence, but only those cases in which the semantic reconstructions are certain are valid. A Siberian homeland has been claimed on the basis of two coniferous tree names in Proto-Uralic, but the trees (Abies sibirica and Pinus cembra) have for a long time been present also in the far east of Europe. A European homeland is supported by words for 'bee', 'honey', 'elm' etc. They can be reconstructed already to Proto-Uralic, if Samoyedic is no longer seen as the first branch to split off.
More recently, loanword evidence has also been used to support a European homeland. Proto-Uralic has been seen as borrowing words from Proto-Indo-European, and the Proto-Indo-European homeland has rarely been located east of the Urals. Proto-Uralic even seems to have developed in close contact with Proto-Indo-Iranian, which is seen as having arisen in the Poltavka culture of the Caspian steppes before its spread to Asia.
The Lyalovo culture (ca. 5000–3650 BC) has been equated with the Proto-Uralic urheimat, and the following Volosovo culture (ca. 3650–1900 BC) with the Proto-Finno-Ugric urheimat. Some scholars believe that the culture of Lyalovo was in fact the Proto-Uralic urheimat and that its inhabitants spread Uralic languages to north-eastern Europe.<ref>Parpola, Asko & Carpelan, Christian: The Cultural Counterparts to Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Uralic and Proto-Aryan - Matching the dispersal and contact patterns in the linguistic and archaeological record, pp. 107–141, 2005</ref> The Volosovo culture has been named the Bronze Age Successor Culture, a textile-ceramic culture that developed in the region between Upper Volga and lakes Ladoga and Onega. It was distinguished from other groups based on the traces of textile used for the production of ceramics, and spread southeast all the way to central Volga, south to the entire river valley of the Oka, southwest to the northern shore of the Daugava, and northwest of Fennoscandia to Karelia, Finland and northern Sweden and Norway. Known as the Seima-Turbino phenomenon, it was a culturally unified, extensive network of trade in copper and bronze. The traces of the Seima-Turbino phenomenon are found in a wide area that begins in Sweden and ends in the Altai Mountains.Nordqvist, Kerkko & Herva, Vesa-Pekka & Ikäheimo, Janne & Lahelma, Antti: Early Copper Use in Neolithic North-Eastern Europe: An Overview. Estonian Journal of Archeology, 2012, 16th ed., No. 1, pp. 3–25. Tallinn, Tartu, Estonia: Estonian Academy of Sciences.
However, Jaakko Häkkinen argues that the language of the Volosovo culture was not itself Uralic, but a Paleo-European substratum to Uralic, especially its westernmost branches, and identifies Proto-Uralic with the Garino-Bor culture instead.