"I am uncertain about the Indo-Europeans and don't really know if they were a people, ethnic group, race or language"
They were all of those things except race. There are only three or four races around the world. They started as a people, split into different groups as their homeland went into farming and their population expanded and later each group evolved conscious of their own ethnicity and with their movements, were *absorbed* by the people they conquered. Thus they evolved into what people call latin, celt, greek, scando-germanic, etc The fact that europeans are so different is because there were so many different peoples in europe by the time they arrived. BUT the language the conquerors imposed on most europeans was an indoeuropean one. This is not far fetched when compared to later events during the middle ages. The Gauls for instance, have ended up speaking a foreign language, ie Latin, with minor elements from the Franks and almost nothing of their original language - Gaulish. And yet, all of those languages retain the same basic structures and words. Compare them to Basque or Hungarian/Finnish (the only non-IE lang in Europe nowadays) and you will feel how 'foreign' they are. And in fact, they were (and still are) the native languages of the people in the mountains of northern iberia or in scandinavia.
There have always been migrations - there is no reason why the whole of europe wasn't entirely 'occupied' by incomers only because of the large distances. If you look at the amerindians, they had to deal with a larger territory than Europe and everyone seems to accept that. In fact, I believe the migrations must have, like with the IE, come in different droves and that's why newer dates are being found all the time. The Clovis could have replaced an earlier more native population.
"The native Siberians are and were the same ethnic stock as the American Indians. Their 19th century history was another dreadful tragedy of abuse, persecution and land theft. Photographs show them as being identical in physical features to Native Americans. If they took Votan with them from Siberia - that is surely less unlikely than the independent, unconnected invention of two such similar names and characteristics."
I have always agreed with that view too;but though I knew of the shamanic elements I didnt know about the Siberian Votan. Please tell more or send a link. 'Unconnected inventions' are a naive occurrence for something so crucial and respected in the past as ancestor / religious worship etc. Everyone accepts the migrations from Asia so why not the culture? There are also many similarities with the Jomon, the ancient Japanese (before the Yayoi farmers) who were also Siberian, as opposed to Chinese.
And also, the Finno-ugric or the Laps were primarily western Siberians, inhabitants of the vast Northern tundra, there my connection with Scandinavian belief taking some shamanic elements from the natives once they arrived.
