A Short History of Hungary

The prehistory of the Hungarians, or Magyars, like the early history of most peoples, is obscured by the mists of time. What is known for certain is that the Hungarian language belongs to the and Finno-Ugrian language family that evolved from the Uralic
protolanguage. The languages most closely related to it are Mansi (Vogul) and life Khanty (Ostyak), which form the Ob-Ugrian branch of Finno-Ugric. For centuries the Mansi and the Khanty have inhabited a vast area of Western Siberia between the middle
and lower reaches of the Ob and the Yenisei Rivers. The linguistic kinship, along with the archeological and ethnographic research of the past decades allow us to assume that millennia ago the Hungarians' ancestors also fished, hunted and gathered
together with the Finno-Ugric tribes along the central and northern foothills of the Ural Mountains. Around 3000 BCE the Finnic branch of the Finno-Ugrian language community moved towards the Baltic Sea, while the Ugric branch headed south.

Romsics Ignác (Homokmégy, 1951. március 30. -) Széchenyi-díjas magyar történész, egyetemi tanár, a Magyar Tudományos Akadémia (MTA) rendes tagja. A 20. századi magyar történelem neves kutatója.