[MisterSinister]

The autosomal data shows that Finns are related to other Europeans, though Finns are in some ways genetically distinctive.
Cavalli-Sforza detected a "Finno-ugric" component of about 10% in Finns, and a recent clustering study showed that at a high enough resolution, Finns start to form their own cluster, but no autosomal study links Finnish distinctiveness to Mongoloid admixture.

Haplogroup N3 which is the most common in Finns was “born” in south Siberia about 10 000 years ago. Subcluster N3a1 which is the most common in Baltic Finnish population is estimated to have been in Europe for at least 8000 years. The father of Haplogroup N3a is N, thought to have been born in East Asia about 20 000 years ago (in a region between modern day China and Mongolia) an area correlates roughly with Xinjiang in Western China.
Haplotypes belonging to ancient paragroup N* are still widely distributed in southeastern Asia and, rarely, even in south Siberia. It is believed that the point of transition for N3 and N is south Siberia.
(http://www.familytreedna.com/pdf/Derenko2007.pdf M. Derenko et al , 2007)

N3’s spread into Europe is believed to have happened as a result of the withdrawal of the ice after the last glacial maximum and the concentration of these peoples, which could be refered to as proto Uralic peoples, have been in an area around modern day Ukraina, northwestern Russia.

Today 30 million northeastern European men carry N3a compared with about 1 million Asian men throughout northern Eurasia where it has been spread several thousand years later than to Europe. The European N3 does not have a genetic linkage with the Asian.

Does the birthplace of N give us a reason to believe these people really were Mongoloid?
Not at all, About 200,000 years ago, in Eastern Africa a Homo group started the evolution towards Homo sapiens, the modern human. About 100,000 years ago, modern humans entered South Asia and by 70,000 years ago they were present in southern China. 40,000 years ago, they entered Europe and this ancestral type was called "Cro-Magnon". About 55,000 years ago humans from southern Asia entered Australia. But all these groups are not what we see today in China and Europe, but more related to the Australian Aborigines.

In Siberia the first humans appeared almost 25,000 years ago, and from here, a group that already started to evolve towards the typical Mongoloid race entered 14,000 years ago the North American prairies through Behringia. 13,000 years ago, these people reached central South America.
The Han Chinese appeared in the Tibet area (their language is related to the Tibetan) and by about 5,000 years ago started to displace other tribes from modern Eastern China, many speaking Hmong-Mien, Thai and Tibetan-related
languages. In fact, even today southern China is home to various minorities from these groups, and from a historical point of view, modern western and northern China was not Chinese at all.
There are skeletons found in north China are about 15.000 years old. They are neither Caucasoid nor Mongoloid. Caucasoid/Mongoloid split did not occur until 10.000BP (Zerjal et al 1997).
The oldest distinct Mongoloid skull is roughly 9000 years old.

Let’s look at Xinjiang. This is an interesting region where different peoples have passed through.
According to Dr. Dolkun Kamberi
"Xinjiang is today known as the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of the Peoples Republic of China, one of six territorial regions of China. In the past, however, it has been known by a variety of different names such as Inner Asia, Chinese Turkestan, East Turkestan, Uighurstan, many of which conjure up images of the silk road. On the south, Xinjiang is bordered by Tibet, to the north and west is Russia, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tadjikistan and Afghanistan. The region possesses an historical culture and history all its own, as proven by the remarkable discoveries made by Kamberi and his colleagues in ancient cemeteries.
Throughout its history, Xinjiang has been the meeting ground for the civilizations of the east and west; Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity were all practiced in the region; Indo-Iranian languages, and Greek, Ural-Altaic, Tibetan, were all spoken here. "
(http://christianparty.net/tarim.htm)
In this area the 3-5000 years old Tarik mummies of distinct European phenotype were found and this gives us a direct insight in the areas diversity of peoples. This is said about one of the mummies known as the Cherchen man: "Radiocarbon dating, showed that he had been lying there since the 11th century BC and that similar mummies found in the region dated from between 2000BC and 300BC. Until then, historians believed that China had not been in contact with the West until around 140BC. Proof of the Xinjiang mummies' European origins came in 1995, when DNA tests showed that they were genetically related to present-day Swedes, Finns, Tuscans, Corsicans and Sardinians."
(http://www.channel4.com/history/micr...s/tcase16.html)