Thread by @Paracelsus1092

Ok, wild speculation time.

There's an old theory that the Xiongnu Confederation were led by a Native American Athabaskan group who back-migrated into Siberia.

Yes, I will elaborate

These maps show the Yeniseian languages and the proposed Dené–Yeniseian family, which links the Yeniseian and Na-Dené languages of North America.

This link between the Old and New World languages was noticed as far back as 1708, and the specific connection between Yeniseic and Athabaskan-Tlingit comes from the 1920's. But it has been Edward Vajda who has produced the most convincing work on the topic.

Vajda presented his theories in a number of recent papers and presentations, that the proto-Dené–Yeniseian homeland was located around the Amur and Aldan rivers, before they split and the Na-Dené speakers moved into America.

However, this theory has been challenged with a specific criticism, that the Yeniseian peoples are not remnants of a homeland, but rather the descendants of Athabaskans who came back from America.

Phylogenetic analysis in 2014 supports the assertion that "a Dene-Yeniseian connection more likely represents radiation out of Beringia with back-migration into central Asia than a migration from central or western Asia to North America."

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

Genetic studies on population flows back and forth across the Beringian Strait show a confusing picture, with subhaplogroup A2a reappearing in the Evenks and Selkups.

As of today, there's no clear genetic link between the surviving Yeniseian speakers, represented by the Ket, and the wider Na-Dené peoples. This is strange given the strong evidence for the shared language family.

One possibility we are left with is that a small elite group of Dene-Yeniseian speakers moved back into Siberia, spreading the language but leaving little genetic evidence of their presence.

This seems to be a position, tentatively held, by some researchers, who link the Yeniseian language to the Xiongnu Confederation. This might mean that a core group of migrants came back to became an elite force on the east Eurasian steppe.

Vajda has gone even further and claimed that the Hun elite spoke a Yeniseian language, but this seems a minority hypothesis within an already speculative history.

There's plenty to take issue with here, but it can't be denied the idea of a group of Beringians or North Americans back migrating to Siberia and forming a powerful nomadic warrior confederation is interesting to speculate about.