ethnic groups in Europe

Europeans are the focus of European ethnology, the field of anthropology related to the various ethnic groups that reside in the states of Europe. Groups may be defined by common genetic ancestry, common language, or both. Pan and Pfeil (2004) count 87 distinct "''peoples of Europe''", of which 33 form the majority population in at least one sovereign state, while the remaining 54 constitute ethnic minorities. The total number of national minority populations in Europe is estimated at 105 million people, or 14% of 770 million Europeans.Christoph Pan, Beate Sibylle Pfeil (2002),
Minderheitenrechte in Europa. Handbuch der europäischen Volksgruppen
', Braumüller, (Google Books, snippet view). Als
2006 reprint by Springer
(Amazon, no preview) . The Russians are the most populous among Europeans, with a population of roughly 120 million. There are no universally accepted and precise definitions of the terms " ethnic group" and "nationality". In the context of European ethnography in particular, the terms ''ethnic group'', ''people'', ''nationality'' and ''ethno-linguistic group'', are used as mostly synonymous, although preference may vary in usage with respect to the situation specific to the individual countries of Europe.

Overview

About 20–25 million residents (3%) are members of diasporas of non-European origin. The population of the European Union, with some 450 million residents, accounts for two thirds of the current European population.

Both Spain and the United Kingdom are special cases, in that the designation of nationality, Spanish and British, may controversially take ethnic aspects, subsuming various regional ethnic groups (see nationalisms and regionalisms of Spain and native populations of the United Kingdom).
Switzerland is a similar case, but the linguistic subgroups of the Swiss are discussed in terms of both ethnicity and language affiliations.

Linguistic classifications

Of the total population of Europe of some 740 million (as of 2010), close to 90% (or some 650 million) fall within three large branches of Indo-European languages, these being;

* Romance, including Aromanian, Arpitan, Catalan, Corsican, French and other Langues d'oïl, Friulian, Galician, Istro-Romanian, Italian, Ligurian, Ladino, Megleno-Romanian, Occitan, Portuguese, Romanian, Romansh, Sardinian and Spanish.
* Germanic, including Danish, Dutch, English, Faroese, Frisian, German, Icelandic, Limburgish, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Norwegian, Scots, Swedish, and Yiddish. Afrikaans, a daughter language of Dutch, is spoken by some South African and Namibian migrant populations.
* Slavic, including Belarusian, Bulgarian, Czech, Kashubian, Macedonian, Polish, Russian, Rusyn, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Slovenian, Sorbian and Ukrainian.

Three stand-alone Indo-European languages do not fall within larger sub-groups and are not closely related to those larger language families;
* Greek (about 12 million)
* Albanian (about 9 million)
* Armenian (about 3.5 million)

In addition, there are also smaller sub-groups within the Indo-European languages of Europe, including;

* Baltic, including Latvian, Lithuanian, Samogitian and Latgalian.
* Celtic languages, including Breton, Cornish, Irish, Manx, Welsh, and Scottish Gaelic.
* Iranic, mainly Ossetian in the Caucasus.
* Indo-Aryan is represented by the Romani language spoken by Roma people of eastern Europe, and is at root related to the Indo-Aryan languages of the Indian subcontinent.

Besides the Indo-European languages, there are other language families on the European continent which are considered unrelated to Indo-European:

* Uralic languages, including Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Komi, Livonian, Mari, Mordvin, Sámi, Samoyedic, and Udmurt.
* Turkic languages, including Azeri, Bashkir, Chuvash, Gagauz, Kazakh, Nogai, Tatar, and Turkish.
* Semitic languages, including: Assyrian Neo-Aramaic (spoken in parts of eastern Turkey and the Caucasus by Assyrian Christians), Hebrew (spoken by some Jewish populations), and Maltese. Arabic is spoken by some migrant communities from the Middle East and North Africa.
* Kartvelian languages (also known as South Caucasian languages), including Georgian, Laz, Mingrelian, Svan, and Zan.
* Northwest Caucasian languages, including Abkhaz, Abaza, Adyghe, Circassian, Kabardian, and Ubykh.
* Northeast Caucasian languages, including Avar, Chechen, Dargin, Ingush, Lak, and Lezgian.
* Language isolates: Basque, spoken in the Basque regions of Spain and France, is an isolate language, the only one in Europe, and is believed to be unrelated to any other language, living or extinct.
* Mongolic languages exist in the form of Kalmyk, spoken in the South region of Russia.

History

Prehistoric populations

The Basques have been found to descend from the population of the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age directly.
By contrast, Indo-European groups of Europe (the Centum, Balto-Slavic, and Albanian groups) migrated throughout most of Europe from the Pontic steppe. They are assumed to have developed ''in situ'' through admixture of earlier Mesolithic and Neolithic populations with Bronze Age, proto-Indo-Europeans.
The Finnic peoples are assumed to also be descended from Proto-Uralic populations further to the east, nearer to the Ural Mountains, that had migrated to their historical homelands in Europe by about 3,000 years ago.

Reconstructed languages of Iron Age Europe include Proto-Celtic, Proto-Italic and Proto-Germanic, all of these Indo-European languages of the centum group, and Proto-Slavic and Proto-Baltic, of the satem group. A group of Tyrrhenian languages appears to have included Etruscan, Rhaetian, Lemnian, and perhaps Camunic. A pre-Roman stage of Proto-Basque can only be reconstructed with great uncertainty.

Regarding the European Bronze Age, the only relatively likely reconstruction is that of Proto-Greek (ca. 2000 BC). A Proto-Italo-Celtic ancestor of both Italic and Celtic (assumed for the Bell beaker period), and a Proto-Balto-Slavic language (assumed for roughly the Corded Ware horizon) has been postulated with less confidence. Old European hydronymy has been taken as indicating an early (Bronze Age) Indo-European predecessor of the later centum languages.

According to geneticist David Reich, based on ancient human genomes that his laboratory sequenced in 2016, Europeans descend from a mixture of four distinct ancestral components.

Historical populations

Iron Age (pre-Great Migrations) populations of Europe known from Greco-Roman historiography, notably Herodotus, Pliny, Ptolemy and Tacitus:
* Aegean: the Greek tribes, Pelasgians, and Anatolians.
*Balkans: the Illyrians ( List of ancient tribes in Illyria), Dacians, and Thracians.
* Italian peninsula: the Camunni, Rhaetians, Lepontii, Adriatic Veneti, Gauls, Ligurians, Etruscans, Italic peoples and Greek and Phoenician colonies in its neighboring Italian islands.
* Western/Central Europe: the Celts ( list of peoples of Gaul, List of Celtic tribes), Rhaetians and Swabians, Vistula Veneti, Lugii and Balts.
*Iberian peninsula and Pyrenees : the Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (Iberians, Celts, Celtiberians, Lusitani, Basques, Turdetani), of the Pyrenean piedmont ( Aquitani) between the Pyrenees and the Atlantic ocean, and Greek and Phoenician coastal Mediterranean colonies.
*Sardinia and Corsica: the ancient Sardinians and Corsicans (also known as Nuragic and Torrean peoples), comprising the '' Corsi'', '' Balares'', '' Ilienses'' tribes and Phoenician colonies.
*British Isles: the Celtic tribes in Britain and Ireland and Picts/ Priteni.
* Northern Europe: the Baltic Finns, Germanic peoples ( list of Germanic peoples) and Normans.
*Sicily: the Italic Sicels and Morgetes, the Sicani, Elymians and Greek and Phoenician colonies.
*Eastern Europe: the Veneti ( Early Slavs), Scythians and Sarmatians.
* Armenian Highlands/Anatolia: the Armenians.

Historical immigration

Ethno-linguistic groups that arrived from outside Europe during historical times are:
*Phoenician colonies in the Mediterranean (including regions in Spain, Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus and the Aegean), from about 1200 BC to the fall of Carthage after the Third Punic War in 146 BC.
*Assyrian conquest of Cyprus, Southern Caucasus (including parts of modern Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan) and Cilicia during the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC).
* Iranian influence: Achaemenid control of Thrace (512–343 BC) and the Bosporan Kingdom, Cimmerians (possible Iranians), Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, Ossetes.
*The Jewish diaspora reached Europe in the Roman Empire period, the Jewish community in Italy dating to around AD 70 and records of Jews settling Central Europe (Gaul) from the 5th century (see History of the Jews in Europe).
*The Hunnic Empire (5th century AD), converged with the Barbarian invasions, contributing to the formation of the First Bulgarian Empire.
*The Slavic migrations (6th century AD), and the subsequent split into Eastern Slavs, Western Slavs and Southern Slavs.
* Avar Khaganate (c. 560s–800).
*The Bulgars (or Proto-Bulgarians), a semi-nomadic Turkic people, originally from Central Asia, eventually absorbed by the Slavs.
*The Magyars (Hungarians), an Uralic-speaking people, and the Turkic Pechenegs and Khazars, arrived in Europe in about the 8th century (see Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin).
*The Arabs conquered Cyprus, Crete, Sicily (establishing the Emirate of Sicily in 831, from which they would be expelled in 1224), some places along the coast of southern Italy, Malta, Greek Empire and most of Iberia (founding a polity known as Al-Andalus in 711, ruled also by Berber dynasties of the Almoravides and the Almohads, from whose domain they would be expelled in 1492).
*Exodus of Maghreb Christians.
*The western Kipchaks known as Cumans entered the lands of present-day Ukraine in the 11th century.
*The Mongol/ Tatar invasions (1223–1480), and Ottoman control of the Balkans (1389–1878). These medieval incursions account for the presence of European Turks and Tatars