| Proto-Uralic | |
|---|---|
| (may be equivalent to Proto-Finno-Ugric) | |
| Reconstruction of | Uralic languages |
| Region | near the Ural Mountains or Sayan Mountains[1] |
| Era | 7,000–2,000 BCE |
| Lower-order reconstructions | |
Proto-Uralic is the unattested reconstructed language ancestral to the modern Uralic language family. The reconstructed language is thought to have been originally spoken in a small area in about 7000–2000 BCE (estimates vary), and then expanded across northern Eurasia, gradually diverging into a dialect continuum and then a language family in the process. The location of the area or Urheimat is not known, and various strongly differing proposals have been advocated, but the vicinity of the Ural Mountains is generally accepted as the most likely.