Where is the Slavic homeland, according to linguists, and how do they know that?

Question

UPDATE: After posting the question, I found out, to my great disappointment, that Manhunt Unabomber is only loosely based on real events, so I'm rephrasing the question:

Where is the Slavic homeland, according to linguists, and how do they know that? Is there any truth to the story relayed in Manhunt Unabomber (below)?

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Original question:

In the Unabomber season of Manhunt (presumably based on real events), a Stanford linguist explains the origin of Slavs. Her story goes:

Around the year 600, Slavic peoples suddenly appeared all over Europe: Germany, Poland, Serbia, Russia, but nobody could figure out where they came from. It was a huge historical mystery, until they started looking at language, and they realized that Proto-Slavic was missing words for certain kinds of trees -- they had to borrow words for "oak" and "beech" and "pine"... The Pripyat river valley in Ukraine, it's basically this huge swamp, the only place in Europe where there are no trees!

It's an interesting theory, but there is one problem with it. Pripyat is surrounded by trees. You can't find pictures of Pripyat (a city on the Pripyat river, evacuated following the Chernobyl disaster), without trees in them.

What happened? Did trees appear where there weren't any in 500AD?

Answer 1

I want to point out that there are a lot of tree names in Slavonic languages with clear cognates in other branches of Indogermanic, e.g., the words for birch and ash tree—the analysis goes down to the level of tree species and where those species can be found historically.

Beeches are indeed absent in the proposed Slavic homeland, see this distribution map of two species of beeches for a reference. The cognate word to English beech is transferred to the elder tree in Slavic.

Modern tries to locate a Slavic Homeland recur to extra-linguistic methods to locate it, like linking it with archeological artefacts or doing analysis of Y chromosome haplogroups.

EDIT: The quoted trees "oak" and "pine" in Manhunt Unabomber are bogus, both species exist in the proposed Slavic homeland and both species have inherited names in the Slavic languages.

Answer 2

I'm struggling to find a true statement in that story :) Let's take it apart:

Around the year 600, Slavic peoples suddenly appeared all over Europe:

At least one Slavic tribe had settled in Europe well before 600 - the Wends/Veneti, in the 1st-2nd century CE.

They started appearing in larger numbers as part of the great migration together with many other tribes pushed westwards by invasions from the east, notably Mongol invasions. This was far from "sudden", it lasted a century or two.

Slavs didn't appear "all over Europe", but only in the eastern and maybe central parts (depending on your definition of Europe).

Germany, Poland, Serbia, Russia,

Of course, none of these existed as political entities, so they should be understood only geographically.

but nobody could figure out where they came from. It was a huge historical mystery, until they started looking at language,

I'm pretty sure people at the time knew :) Modern historians have an approximate idea too. Linguistics plays a role but let's not exaggerate it.

and they realized that Proto-Slavic was missing words for certain kinds of trees -- they had to borrow words

Missing words for common species of trees?! - extremely unlikely.

Sometimes common species are referred to as a combination of words, which might later merge. It wouldn't be fair to conclude that there must be no bears in Russia just because in Russian "bear" = "honey eater".

Sometimes in the evolution of a language, a borrowing could replace an existing word, leaving a blind spot for us. For instance this is believed to have happened with the original Slavic word for "bread" (which we don't know), it got replaced with a borrowing from Proto-germanic.

for "oak" and "beech" and "pine"...

Proto-Slavic does have native reconstructed words for oak=*dôbъ and pine=*borъ.

Beech=*bukъ is indeed most likely a Germanic loanword.

The Pripyat river valley in Ukraine, it's basically this huge swamp, the only place in Europe where there are no trees!

Utter nonsense, but it could make an interesting scene in a movie plot :)

EDIT:

A likely origin of the idea is mentioned in The Making of the Slavs, page 8:

Answer 3

Wikipedia seems to have a source for the claim, in this article

The Common Slavic words for beech, larch and yew were also borrowed from Germanic, which led Polish botanist Józef Rostafiński to place the Slavic homeland in the Pripet Marshes, which lacks those plants.

Answer 4

Venderna (Swedish) or the Wends could have been coming with the Goths that went back from Rome to Scandinavia in the fifth or sixth century after the Huns came from the east. The Goths lived in former Yugoslavia in the fourth and fifth century. Geto- Dacians they were called and the Romans called us Geatae in the south of Sweden. We call us Östgötar and Vestgötar (jötar as in Jutar in Denmark) and Gutar (the island Gotland). Also the men from Dalarna in the middle and west of Sweden is called Dalmasar as in Dalmatia in Balkan. The Wends lived in nowadays Poland and north of them the Goths at Gotland. West of Gotland and north of Scania lived getae (västgötar and Östgötar) Further up in Sweden along Dalälven lived Dalmasarna. Northeast of the border from Scania there is the Lister peninsula where they speak an ostro gothic dialect that is very special. Also at Gotland and in Dalarna they speak different from the rest of the Swedes. Maybe because they came back around year 500 with the Wends. Also the Alans were together with the Goths down in the Balkans 300 to 400 so it is possible that the Slavs came with my ancestors back to the north and settled around the Vistula River. The city Gdansk has the word "dansk" in it meaning Danish in Scandinavian. So both the Swedes and Danes have been there too and the vikings called Jomsvikings lived on the island of Wolin there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_the_Wends