Talk:Paleo-European history overview

The discussion is now open. Have fun! --WeepingElf (talk) 07:25, 22 January 2018 (PST)

This is very interesting! For real!

- About the Etruscans, I found this map [1], I believe that the Aegean-Tyrrhenian languages could be from a Macro-Mithian group, together with Kartvelian and possibly Sumerian.

- In point 6, "Danubian" refers to Danubian? would be a relative of the main language of the Cardial-impresso culture (this family would be extended along with other minority groups presumably)?

- Also in the point 6, I usually believe that Iberian is not a homogenous language, maybe not even a family, surely it was a lingua franca of origin that was extended with Greek and Phoenician trade, but from a family from the north that arrived with [2], while the Basque would be Pyrenean, the Proto-Iberian family would be "Alpine" presumably from the Massif Central. It is my theory. It would be a Paleo-atlantic language, and it ends up displacing the Paleo-Mediterranean languages originating in the Iberian peninsula (6 or 3 families more or less) like this [3]. So it seems no known representative of Paleo-mediterranean, in the LLL would be Eteonoric or as you proposed before, possibly Basque and other relatives.

- Do you think that a branch of Afro-Asiatic languages could have developed in Europe as in this theory: [4]? I think at least two, one from the Balkans and the Middle East and another from the Iberian Peninsula.

--Spinovenator (talk) 15:26, 24 January 2018 (PST)

As for Etruscan, it may indeed be related to Kartvelian, which may be a Macro-Mitian offshoot, though I am sceptical of that, it is just one pronoun that seems to match, as I consider the most likely place for Proto-Mitian somewhere near Lake Baykal.

The Danubian page you ask me about needs to be rewritten! I shall do that within the next few days. The way it is, it dates back to the time when I entertained the Europic hypothesis, according to which the languages of the LBK and Vinča cultures were related to PIE, and which I have abandoned again because it was untenable in light of archaeological and genetic evidence against it. Also, I no longer think that the Vinča symbols were writing. The only items that look like early writing are the Tartaria tablets, and these are utterly atypical and probably spurious.

TaylorS's Alpic conlang is in turn based on the assumption that Etruscan was a Europic language, which I already had abandoned back then. Taylor was inspired by Glen Gordon's ideas, which I consider misguided.

I don't see why Iberian shouldn't be a single language or group of closely related languages. The inscriptions seem linguistically quite homogenous, though details are not known as nobody understands them.

What regards Basque, one would guess that it descends from the language of those Neolithic farmers from which the Basques seem to descend. I.e., it is the last surviving Cardial-Impresso language. But other scenarios are possible, for instance, a neighbouring hunter-gatherer tribe may have established themselves as rulers over the ancestors of the Basques and imposed their language. There is not a long way from a hunter to a warrior, indeed a shorter one then from a farmer to a warrior. At least, a hunter knows how to kill living things. And it is of course well-known that genes and languages do not always travel together.

As long as we don't understand the Iberian inscriptions, we cannot say whether Basque and Iberian are related or not. There seem to be a few similarities between Iberian and Old Basque, but these may be due to contact, or entirely spurious, and have not proven helpful in understanding Iberian. After all, the same word shape may occur in unrelated languages, especially if one disregards meanings, which are unknown on the Iberian side.

The idea that Afro-Asiatic languages were spoken on the European Atlantic coast, perhaps by the "megalith culture" (put in quotes because these do not really constitute a coherent archaeological culture!), is old; it dates back to the theories of a Semitic substratum in Insular Celtic, but that one is based solely on the fact that both Insular Celtic and Semitic are VSO, and hardly any linguist takes it seriously anymore. It is now championed by Theo Vennemann, but his evidence is shotty.

--WeepingElf (talk) 06:52, 25 January 2018 (PST)

I see that his theory of Europic could be favorable, except for his relationship with the Etruscans, but it is also true that there is no proof in favor...

I see with more certainty that the Cardium pottery transmission is due to a wave of innovation in the techniques that affected the epipaleolithic autochthonous population rather than to a generalized demographic migration, which does not imply that some groups may have arrived as T1a and G2a haplogroups. The Cardium Pottery is not related to the expansion of R1b (majoritary haplogroup in Basques, Iberians and all Western Europe), I see it more related to the bell-beaker culture and Unetice culture. Possibly they spoke a "Macro-Basque" (Paleo-Atlantic) language, that would arrive to Spain on 2900 BC and 2500 BC, replacing linguistic and genetic groups above all to the north, this first wave would be the Proto-Basque, then later the Proto-Iberians who had settled in the central massif of France would arrive with the expansion of the Urnfield culture, since all Iberians follow this tradition, and would have arrived together with sorothaptic, since this culture is mostly Indo-European. I believe that this is the only logical relationship that I can give regarding the expansion of the haplogroup R1b.

The Iberians could be a family of closely related languages, related in a distant way to the Basque language, but there is evidence both in the toponymy and anthroponymy of some areas that look different, so I think that what you consider today is Iberian (I am referring to a member of an Iberian family as such), it existed only in areas of the Catalan Pyrenees and south of the Spanish Levant, later it would be extended as a lingua franca thanks to trade, and the rest of the peoples would end up adopting it in greater or lesser extent, while others do not, such as tartessian, bastetani ... the oretani at first not, but finally if they count the chronicles of their capitan Orisos, among other peoples, I say these for noticing them important. I do not know, it's my interpretation.

In LLL, I believe that Paleo-Atlantic could spread throughout the West Europe, which would explain the high frequency of this haplogroup here.

The megalithic culture really does not know where to fit, because its majority halogroup is K and U5, the relationship with the first farmers, they may be related with Pre-Sami. In LLL could be Hairo and Maerik

--Spinovenator (talk) 11:43, 25 January 2018 (PST)

I haven't given up the Europic hypothesis (it was mine, not Taylor's or Glen's) without good reasons. The idea was that both the Proto-Indo-Europeans and the Danubian Neolithic cultures (Starčevo-Körös, Vinča and LBK) were both Black Sea Flood refugees from where now the Bay of Odessa is, and therefore spoke related languages. The problem with this is that they have very different genetic profiles, and their ceramics and other material expressions are not particularly similar. Also, it seems as if the Black Sea Flood did either not happen at all, or much too early for such a scenario. So there is simply no reason to assume that the languages were related! Taylor used the Europic hypothesis and combined it with Glen Gordon's idea that Etruscan was the closest known kin of IE, but that is an idea which I once considered but abandoned even earlier than the Europic hypothesis itself.

I don't know what languages the Danubian cultures would have spoken, but a possibility is that they were related to Kartvelian. I chose that possibility for Tommian, but mainly because it is such a cool idea to explore in a conlang - Kartvelian languages have interesting features and just ROCK. The few morphological similarities Etruscan shares with IE it also shares with Kartvelian, so a relationship between Etruscan and Kartvelian appears to be a possibility, especially if Etruscan originated in NW Anatolia and the people there in turn have south Caucasian roots as you suggested.

The Urnfield culture probably already was Indo-European; I think it was some kind of "Macro-Celtic" that had not yet lost PIE */p/, and a residue of this is attested in Lusitanian. Indeed, it may simply have been an earlier stage of Celtic: the loss of */p/ may have propagated through the area as a shibboleth of the more sophisticated and iron-using Hallstatt culture; likewise, the */kw/ > */p/ shift in Gaulish and British may have spread as a shibboleth of the yet more sophisticated La Tène culture which failed to reach Ireland and the Iberian Peninsula. Such things do sometimes happen in dialect continua; an example is the High German sound shift which propagated through Germany from the south, petering out in the Rhinelands and never reaching the Low German dialects.

I used to think that the Old European Hydronymy reflected the language of the Bell Beaker people, but there are two problems with that:

1. The Bell Beaker people seem to have originated in the Iberian Peninsula, which makes it unlikely that they spoke a language related to IE, as the OEH language seems to have been. (Though the latter is not certain! Vennemann believes the language in question to be Vasconic, and while his evidence is poor, that idea cannot be dismissed out of hand.)

2. The Bell Beaker people seem to have been a mobile diaspora rather than an autochthonous population; there are no Bell Beaker settlements. As they often travelled far (strontium isotope analysis has shown that many of them were interred far from their birthplace; the Amesbury Archer, for instance, found near Stonehenge, had grown up somewhere in what is now Switzerland) and their finds are often associated with sites of either commercial (such as prehistoric salt works or copper mines) or cultural significance (e. g., Stonehenge), they probably were a class of travelling merchants. Such a group would have left as much impact on the river names of western Europe as the Roma did on those of eastern and central Europe, namely none.

I now think that the Bell Beaker people spoke a language that originated in the Iberian Peninsula and may have been related to Basque, and contributed at most a few cultural terms (mainly names of commodities, such as metals) to the Aquan languages.

The "megalithic culture" is not a thing. It is just that various Neolithic groups in western Europe used big stones for their monuments. A "megalithic language" never existed.

Maerik could be a remnant of Pre-Saami. Hairo is an entity which I don't know where to put it. There has been confusion about where it was to be spoken (the Alps? the Hochrhein? Rügen?), and it looks WEIRD with its lack of verbs as we know them (it has only something like participles and a single auxiliary verb Christian Thalmann calls the "vector"). So it is perhaps best to ignore it, as I tend to ignore Taylor's Alpic, and some other languages listed on the LLL page which are IMHO just crap - and apparently abandoned by their authors years ago.

Indeed, I am considering forsaking the whole edifice of the LLL as the project seems to have died, and I am the only of the original members who still works on the languages he contributed. The lostlangs mailing list has seen no traffic from other members than me for over a year.

--WeepingElf (talk) 14:20, 25 January 2018 (PST)

I do not think that the language of Cardium pottery culture is Vasconic, Basque is too divergent to be so relatively new in Europe, and many words in Basque are related to the Paleolithic, such as Aitz (Stone), Aitzur/Aiztur (Hoe), Aizterko (Scissors), Aizto (Knife), and more show relationship with tools made with stone, I at least give it an antiquity of 20,000 years, possibly Solutrean, with the first Cromagnon.

I agree that Urnfield culture mostly speaking a Proto-Italo-Celtic language more or less that would lead to the Lusitanian and Belgian, among others and that influence other languages ​​around. But the Iberians used the same ritual of burial in urns with ashes, which is precisely what characterizes the culture, something that the ancient Basques did not. Perfectly they could have spread together as part of the same culture, this has already happened several times in history as the Berbers next to the Arabs or Turks together with the Mongols. As you propose, it could have been a great Sprachbuch with different degrees of mutual intelligibility, of what Italic and Celtic would later be born, in regards to the already said Indo-European language.

I like the idea that Bell-Beaker is an itinerant culture with Vasconic roots, it is curious for the Neolithic about the importance of trade and how he could reach the British islands that were already islands.

If a megalithic language never existed is rather the dispersion of a cultural phenomenon, would not it be the same with respect to the Cardial-Impressed?

The Almagra pottery could have spoken an Afro-Asiatic language, I see it feasible.

Do not give up LLL!! I think it's amazing and maybe it just needs a remodeling, but you do not abandon it, I find it interesting.

--Spinovenator (talk) 15:15, 26 January 2018 (PST)

As for the Basque "stone tools" words - this argument is highly problematic. Did they ever have scissors made of stone? Those exist only in Flintstones-type cartoons! Scissors simply weren't invented before the Bronze Age. Also, in the Neolithic, knives, axes and the like were still made of stone. This is still "stone age" after all. If you are going to do anything with Basque, you should definitely read The History of Basque by the late, lamented R. L. Trask, who dispells all the myths surrounding the Basque language! Yet, the possibility of a connection between the stone-word and the tool-words is not out of the question, but then, the words for the tools were derived from a word related to 'stone' that had acquired the meaning 'tool' long ago and no longer meant 'stone' when the tool words were coined.

Here is another thought: the western IE word *h₂ayes 'metal' could be related to these words - a shift from 'stone' to 'metal' does not cause much difficulty, as both have been materials for hard, edgy tools and weapons, first stone, then metal. This could be a Wanderwort spread by the Bell Beaker merchants.

We know so little about the languages of Neolithic western Europe that we can't say whether Basque is from the Neolithic or an older layer. That we assume that some of the Neolithic languages were related to Kartvelian in our conlangs means nothing: those Para-Kartvelian languages are just our conlangs. When doing both research into real prehistoric languages and making up fictional ones, one has to carefully restrict the information flow to one direction: from the research on natlangs to the conlanging. NOT the other way, because that would mean becoming a crackpot!

But I can put up with the working assumption for the LLL that Basque is of Paleolithic or Mesolithic origin, even if the Basques are genetically Neolithic. As I have said, a tribe of hunters can quite easily become warriors and conquer neighbouring farmers and impose their language on them.

As for the Urnfield culture: Not all parts of it must have spoken the same language. Just like genes and languages do not always travel together, cultures and languages do not always travel together, either. Consider the Finns. Linguistically closer to the Saami than the Swedes, but culturally (and genetically) closer to the Swedes than the Saami.

BTW: The influence of the Urnfield culture is also quite clear on the British Isles. While we do not know what kind of languages they spoke there, I have used the hypothesis that they spoke Aquan languages throughout the entire Bronze Age there in my Albic conlang project, and that is one of my dearest creations which I do not want to give up (and the very point around which the LLL crystallized!). Yet, if someone could prove that Bronze Age Britain already spoke an IE language, Celtic or otherwise, I would have to abandon it...

Whether a Cardial-Impresso language family ever existed (and if yes, what it was related to) is indeed uncertain. But it seems that this cultural complex was mostly spread by Neolithic farmers moving in from the east, making a spread of a language family at least plausible.

I am not going to give up the LLL. I may be the only person left to contribute to it, but the projects I had and still have in that framework are alive and well, and I will definitely not drop them, no matter whether the thing will continue to be a group or turn into a personal project. At least, you are interested in it. Also, I no longer would say that Hairo should be "ignored". It may be a Paleo-Mediterranean language that moved north in the Mesolithic, or whatever. Some of the contributions to the LLL may not be among the finest conlangs ever made, and many of them seem to have been given up by their authors, but they are there and they do not hurt anyone.

--WeepingElf (talk) 06:47, 27 January 2018 (PST)

Thank you for recommending the book, I will try to read it for when I have a little more time. :)

I already know that reality should not be mixed with conlangs! XD, But as you say, we have so little information about the linguistics of the Neolithic ... and much less about the paleolithic, after all, studying prehistory is like: "try to read a book in another language and other alphabet, which has been under water and mud for 50 years, which is missing pages and pieces, illegible letters and of which we only have a little information that we can consider as probable, which surely is not, we would be 10% worthy to be interpreted, of which we have not interpreted well or 0.1% to be drastic". Everything will be a speculation!

I personally believe that Basque is Neolithic because it has different names for crops, but there is no possibility that it exists in the large number of place-names throughout Europe that some sources relate to Vasco, so for a time I no longer consider it likely and I considered him a greater seniority.

Although in fact it is known that the haplogroup R1b is neolithic and comes from the Middle East with the expansion of agriculture. As you said "a tribe of hunters can become warriors and conquer neighboring farmers and impose their language on them", it is logical and has already happened several times in Europe, as for example the expansion of the Germanic peoples, I believe that their languages ​​would have been preserved in the south of Europe until today if it had not been for the strong pressure of Latin and Christianity. But I don't know, if this is an Indoeuropean or relative language.

I see an incoherence. You relate the culture of the Printed Cardium with Basque for the expansion of farmers, but if you relate to Basque with genetics, the haplogroup R1b arrived from the Alps (Presumably Urnfield, as the first culture with the majority R1b), not from the Mediterranean, In addition, the Printed Cardium form is characterized by G2a or I2. I propose in any case (if Basque is not prior to agriculture), that a supposed "cardium language" would suppose a substrate for Basque, hence I thought in Huamish, like a Para-Kartvelian.

--Spinovenator (talk) 07:20, 30 January 2018 (PST)

I don't know how to disentangle that incoherence myself! Genetics is pretty much a book of seven seals to me (OK, I understand how the genetic code works - though I have to look it up - and such things, but I am utterly lost on the statistics and other advanced mathematical tools and all that); the research papers the geneticists write are incomprehensible unless you are a geneticist yourself, which I am not. So as a non-geneticist I have to rely on such popular summaries as Jean Manco's Ancestral Journeys or Wikipedia pages, but genetics is such a fast-moving science that such summaries are out of date before they go into print. I am just as puzzled as you are by the prominence of the Y-DNA haplogroup R1b in the Basques; this haplogroup is otherwise characteristic of western IE speakers and seems IMHO to have been spread by Aquan speakers (PIE proper seems to correlate to R1a in this scenario).

So what happened? Were the Basques subjugated by western Indo-Europeans (or Aquans) who managed to monopolize fathership but failed to impose their language? Sounds weird, but I wouldn't dare say that such a scenario was impossible. Another possibility would be that people speaking a Paleo-Atlantic language subjugated Aquan speakers but again failed to impose their language (failure to impose their language is not an uncommon thing for conquerors: it happened to the 5th-century Germanic conquerors in Gaul, the Iberian Peninsula and Italy, as well as to the 7th-century Turkic Bulgar conquerors on the Balkan Peninsula). Or were the Proto-Basques a tribe that was somehow "allied" and genetically similar to the Aquans yet speaking an unknown language, as were various Turkic tribes with the Mongols? I just don't know what to make of this!

--WeepingElf (talk) 10:36, 30 January 2018 (PST)

A brief correction of what I wrote four days ago. I suggested that "Western IE" *h₂ayes 'metal' could be connected to the Basque 'stone' and tool words via the Bell Beaker merchants. But *h₂ayes has a reflex in Sanskrit, so it is not "Western IE", and has nothing to do with the Basque words. --WeepingElf (talk) 06:39, 31 January 2018 (PST)

Do you know more about the genetics of Neolithic Britons? This and this seem to suggest that the Neolithicization of the British Isles involved immigrations of populations from Central Europe with a strong G2a presence. I ask because I am going to redo the Razaric languages - I am content with the phonology, which I am going to keep, but the rest was hastily thrown together and I shall redo it completely. And now I am considering redoing Razaric as a branch of Tommian!

--WeepingElf (talk) 11:45, 31 January 2018 (PST)

I think that in principle Razaric is quite good, I am very interested in his distant relationship with Basque, and at first I saw him very credible, maybe it would take something more heritage vocabulary in common. I propose a story for the British Isles according to everything I know and can relate to each other:

1st hunter gatherers (X-8,000): The British Isles are a frozen wasteland, part of the great European tundra, really had no fixed inhabitants during this time only temporary settlements during the summer, there is still doggerland and is at best the only area with stable population. Haplogroup H.

2nd Tardenoisian (8,000-4,500 BC): Just before the sinking of doggerland with They continued to pass as the first properly proper culture of the British Isles, only found in southern England. Haplogroup sample I2b. I propose that they speak a Paleo-atlantic language. Personally I think that the first Basques showed I2b, before being replaced by R1b.

3rd Meldon Bridge (4,500-2,500 BC): It is difficult for the natives could have developed the handling of metal and the construction of megaliths without a foreign influence, possibly Afroasiatic E1b1b or L1b, present in Great Britain and basically throughout Europe, corresponds chronologically with a large period of severe desiccation in the Sahara.

4th Bell-Beaker / Bedd Branwen (2,500-1,400 BC): Bell-Beaker and his descendants as a sample of peoples of central Europe, came to replace for the first time in a very remarkable way the original population, carriers of haplogroup T and G2a , they brought with them the cattle ranch and the agriculture.

• At some point between these two would arrive the Albic, with Hesperic languages.

5th Atlantic Bronze / Urnfield (1400-700 BC): Urnfield as originating carriers of R1b, and on the other hand Atlantic Bronze from Portugal with E-V13 and U5b haplogroups.

6th Indoeuropean (500): The first Celts, who adopt the native genetic heritage, although they were already mostly R1b.

Therefore Razaric should possibly be Tardenoisian, which would relate it to Basque. Then you could create another para-kartvelian, newer than razaric, a superstrate, possibly Bell-Beaker or from Bredd Branwen, carriers of G2a.

That is, I propose two completely different languages, I see no need to replace it (The original Razaric (Paleo-atlantic)). Then we have a lot of para-kartvelian languages distributed by the Neolithic Europe, carried by the first farmers!

--Spinovenator (talk) 08:25, 1 February 2018 (PST)

Razaric related to Basque, fair, that's what I am currently leaning to as well. I briefly considered a Para-Semitic (i.e., Afroasiatic) language, based on the idea that the British Isles Neolithic seems to be from the Mediterranean/Iberian Peninsula rather than Central Europe, and the Mediterranean Neolithic in turn from the Levant. But did the Neolithic Levant already speak Semitic when the founders of the Mediterranean Neolithic set off, ca. 7000 BC? Probably not, that looks like the time when the common ancestor of Semitic, Egyptian and Berber was spoken in Egypt. Perhaps the immigration of Afroasatic speakers into the Levant, who were to become the founders of Semitic (Proto-Semitic is AFAIK dated about 4000 BC), was what triggered the westward migrations of the founders of the Mediterranean Neolithic.

Under such a scenario, a relationship between Basque and Razaric seems plausible. They may both be "Cardial-Impresso" languages, a unit which ultimately came from the Levant, and brought in by farmers. Or both Paleo-Atlantic. Whatever. In both cases, I can use Basque as a reference point for building Razaric.

--WeepingElf (talk) 08:47, 1 February 2018 (PST)

Another addendum. I have been told in this discussion that I was mistaken about a Levantine origin of Cardial; Cardial and LBK are genetically very close to each other and both originate in Anatolia. They seem to have separated only on the Balkan Peninsula, so their languages probably were related.

But what about Basque? There are at least three scenarios possible.

1. Basque is the last surviving Cardial language. Then the Cardial and probably also LBK languages weren't related to Kartvelian. In such a scenario, I'd have to give up Tommian.

2. Basque is a surviving Mesolithic language, perhaps imposed by hunters-become-warriors on a community of Cardial farmers. In that case, Basque has nothing to do with the Cardial and LBK languages, though substratum loanwords (especially agricultural terms) are to be expected.

3. Basque descends from the language of some steppe allies of the Yamnaya people; such confederations of linguistically unaligned tribes have always existed on the steppe. This would mean that Basque originated somewhere in North Caucasia or southwestern Siberia, and has nothing to do with the Cardial and LBK languages.

My favourite scenario right now is scenario 2, which would be most consistent with the fact that there are no cognate languages to Basque anywhere.

I now consider making Razaric a Para-Kartvelian family (again), though almost as distant from Tommian as the latter is from Kartvelian, so a sister rather than a daughter of Tommian. I even have an idea for correspondences of alveolar fricatives and affricates: *s > *s, *ś > *rh, *š > *lh etc.

--WeepingElf (talk) 07:01, 2 February 2018 (PST)

Meanwhile, Salmoneus has suggested a fourth theory for the origin of Basque, namely a migration from North Africa, for which there apparently is some genetic evidence. Sounds attractive. However, there is an argument in favour of Basque being a Cardial language, and that comes from the toponymy of ancient Sardinia. Those old names seem to be related to Basque and Iberian ones, and AFAIK Sardinia is considered quite purely Cardial. But on the other hand, the very name of the island is reminiscent of Šrdš, the name of one of the "Sea Peoples" in Egyptian chronicles, which points at an Aegean origin and militates against a connection between Paleo-Sardinian and Basque. Rather, if the Paleo-Sardinians originated in the Aegean, one would suspect their language to be related to Aegean languages and perhaps Etruscan. Well, place names can be deceptive, as the controversy around the Old European hydronymy shows. Krahe said it was IE; Vennemann says it was Vasconic; they cannot both be right, but the error is not easy to spot. And some other scholars opine that the OEH was just the linguistic equivalent of ley lines.

What all this means: I am flummoxed. I simply can't make sense of it all!

--WeepingElf (talk) 08:22, 3 February 2018 (PST)

The knot can perhaps be untied by a simple idea: the Šrdš perhaps fared the same way as the Franks in Gaul or the Turkic Bulgars on the Balkan. They conquered the land, gave it their name - but lost their language, adopting that of their subjects. The same thing, after all, seems to have happened to another of the Sea Peoples: the Philistines. So Sardinia would have continued speaking a Cardial language despite having an élite of Aegean origin. (Or it adopted the Šrdš language - but the place names stem from the time before the conquest, and therefore reflect the original Cardial language.)

--WeepingElf (talk) 08:45, 3 February 2018 (PST)

-Then there would be an Afro-Asiatic language somewhere in the Mediterranean?

-Why do not you do two Razaric languages? Let's put "Pre-razaric" (Paleo-atlantic) and "Neo-razaric" (Para-Kartvelian). I like Razaric as a para-Kartvelian language!

-Then we have a lot of para-kartvelian languages ​​scattered throughout europe during the expansion of agriculture this is a family officially! Tommian, Razaric, Huamish and Kartvelian.

-I knew that LBK and Cadial-impressed were related and were Anatolian, so I told you that I did not think there could be a relationship with the Basque (although now that you say about Sardinia, I'm rethinking it). Of common origin with LBK and Anatolia, besides the majority presence of G2a, I thought of Huamish to be a brother of Tommian and Kartvelian.

-On the possible origin of the Basque you propose, my favorite scenario is the 2, although I do not see the 3 improbable but it does not finish convincing me. I give the Basque a greater antiquity than the Indo-Europeans, that's why I'm betting that it's a mesolithic and isolated language, as you also say that would be a good archaeo-linguistic test for Europe!

-It is true that Sardinia is purely cardial culturally, but not genetically, they are I2 (Albanians?). I suppose that the Cardial is related to the Etruscan, Pelasgian and other languages ​​of the Aegean. But it is also true that many words of uncertain origin in Sardinian have been related to words with the same meaning in Albanian and this is disconcerting!

-On the etymology of Šrdš, it is true that it is one of the peoples of the sea that could have settled in Sardinia and given it its name, as you say is something normal in history. The Italians sometimes refer to Sardinia as Nuraghe, coming from a Sardinian word of uncertain origin, which is Nurra, Nurri, and Nurru, it would mean a lot of stones, exactly the same situation as Talayot ​​in the Balearic Islands.   -I've started thinking about Sardinia as if it were the English of prehistory! The English (A grosso modo) has pre-Celtic substratum, Celtic toponyms, a large amount of vocabulary of Latin and Greek origin, Nordic and French influences, and a mainly Germanic heritage grammar ...

- Think in Sardinia with a strong Vasconic substratum, Afro-Asiatic influence with grammar and some cardial vocabulary and to this add up the invasions of Ligurians and other peoples of the sea. Many people enter but nobody leaves, everyone has a need to communicate but they do not have time to learn any language correctly, so a poor pidgin is born that would increase its complexity with future invasions and influences.

-I am also CONFUSED but as I told you: prehistory is like reading a destroyed book and to read it you have to rebuild it and that is the most interesting, all are theories!

--Spinovenator (talk) 17:35, 3 February 2018 (PST)

I have also found that the first name that the island had was Ichnusa and it was because of the Phoenicians who were allies of the peoples of the sea by whom the name was changed. Even today the island has a great linguistic variety.

I wanted to make an isolated language, highly complex and full of irregularities for the island but it turns out that the first settlers were arrived in 6,000 BC and that would be the Cardial culture. But I have also found scarce data, but I am useful, that the oldest human remains found are 35,000 BC and 10,000 BC (With an antiquity so could appear a very complex language on the island, like the one I want to do). I have also seen that tools of 400,000 BC and 150,000 BC have been found in the Lower Paleolithic, but I personally believe that they are not humans will be Heidelbergensis surely.

--Spinovenator (talk) 03:09, 4 February 2018 (PST)

Hmm... a lot of food for thought! I had meanwhile more or less settled on a model which has Cardial=Vasconic and Danubian=Para-Kartvelian, but I am not sure yet. How likely is it that the two genetically related main branches of Neolithic Europe spoke utterly different languages? But then, the Basques AFAIK have no substantially higher G2a frequency than the surrounding IE speakers, right? It seems as if the geneticists contradict themselves here? As far as I know, the Basques are as heavily R1b as most other western Europeans, especially Insular Celts (I seem to remember reading somewhere - perhaps one of Cavalli-Sforza's books - that the Insular Celts are genetically most similar of all western Europeans to Basques).

This may mean that at least one of the pre-IE, pre-Aquan languages of Britain (as you suggested, there could be two layers, one Mesolithic, one Neolithic, an idea I also have been considering for long) was related to Basque. So perhaps Basque is a Paleo-Atlantic language, as would the language of Mesolithic Britain (the language of Neolithic Britain may be Para-Kartvelian instead). Iberian shows some evidence of relationship to Basque, but this is not proven yet.

As for Afro-Asiatic languages in Mediterranean Europe, I don't think so, except perhaps a few descendants of Punic in former Carthaginian colonies, such as in the hills behind Cartagena, or in Sardinia.

And Kartvelian, if looked on from the other end, could be the residue of something HUGE. The first Neolithic farmers of the Near East, around where now Turkey, Syria and Iraq meet, spoke a language. This language probably was the ancestor of an extensive language family which would have spread across much of Anatolia, the Levant and Mesopotamia. Question: Which of the non-IE and non-Semitic languages spoken there in historical times, if any, is/was the last residue of this? There are basically six possibilities: Kartvelian, Hattic, Hurrian-Urartian, Sumerian, Elamite, or something lost in history. There is a considerable faction of scholars who opine that Hurrian-Urartian is a Bronze Age incursion from the Caucasus, related to Nakh-Daghestanian. The same may have been the case with Hattic, which some scholars relate to Abkhaz-Adyghean. I have also read somewhere that Sumerian and Elamite probably were incursions from the Iranian plateau (I think there is mythological evidence of that in Sumerian, and Elamite may be related to Dravidian, which probably was the language of the Indus Valley civilization). So we have a choice between Kartvelian and something utterly lost in history, it seems.

Now back to the point which brought me on the Para-Kartvelian trip with Tommian: the high frequency of G2a in modern Georgia and in the LBK. G2a is also very frequent in Cardial populations, at least according to Eupedia. Of course, as I already said, genes and languages do not always travel together - but they often do.

I don't know where to place Tyrsenian in this big picture. This could be another branch of Macro-Kartvelian, perhaps blended with a Mesolithic language that may have survived on the Aegean islands. (As I already said, I place the origin of this family in NW Anatolia around 1200 BC; it may have been the language of Troy.) There are morphological resemblances between Tyrsenian and Kartvelian, though Etruscan shows no sign of ergativity, but it may have simply lost the old Kartvelian aorist, which is the category to which ergativity is limited in Proto-Kartvelian.

Where did you get the notion that Sardinia is heavily I2? According to Eupedia, I2a1 is most common in Bosnia (not Albania) and I2a2 scattered about several centres of gravity, but none particularly common in Sardinia.

--WeepingElf (talk) 10:08, 4 February 2018 (PST)

According to this Wikipedia page, the British Isles were Neolithicized from Central Europe. This is also likelier than a Neolithicization from the Mediterranean for climatic reasons. Mediterranean farmers would have tried to grow such things as oranges and olives, which does not work all that well in Britain except in the extreme southwest, while crops that flourish in Central Europe also do so in Britain. So if these people brought in a language, it would have been a descendant of the LBK language - in my model, a Tommian language. So I think I'll build Razaric accordingly, and leave the Mediterranean languages out of my considerations. Yet, the language of Mesolithic Britain may have been related to Basque if that is a Mesolithic language.

--WeepingElf (talk) 12:22, 4 February 2018 (PST)

I have taken a look at this Wikipedia page, and it seems as if I had misunderstood the news about the Neolithic origin of the Basques. The Atapuerca skeletons whose DNA was examined are from about 3,500 to 5,500 years ago, i.e., long after whatever had happened when Spain was Neolithicized had come to pass! They do not prove at all that the Basques are Cardial people, and easily admit the assumption that they are a surviving Paleo-Atlantic group. There is no need to posit that the Cardial language was related to Basque. Another puzzle solved!

--WeepingElf (talk) 12:52, 4 February 2018 (PST)

Sorry for not answering before, is that I do not have much time.

It is true that the Basques and the Celtic islands have the highest proportion of R1b in Western Europe, this could show as a kind of "genetic substitution". The old areas populated by Paleo-atlantic could be replaced genetically by Aquans, forming monopolies of farmers. Think for a moment about the Indian caste system, perhaps the first Indo-Europeans (here Aquans), tried to monopolize agriculture by creating mixed societies or an old caste system that failed to triumph possibly because of little racial difference. I really do not know how to explain it, but now at least we know that Basque is a Neolithic language! I knew it could not be Cardial, I read it somewhere I do not remember where possibly in wikipedia, but it is good that you affirm it, in that wikipedia page it also puts what I told you about the word "haitz".

How do you explain haplogroup E-V in the Mediterranean, especially Greece and Italy?

Sorry to say that Albania was I2 confused with the words of origin, Bosnian, you're right. But it is also true that Sardinia shows a large amount of I2 as seen in this map:[5]

I love to think that macro-kartvelian was something Huge that spread through Europe with agriculture, maybe the tyrsenians are for kartvelian, what aquans for indoeuropeans, an early expansion triggered by a period of cold and hunger. I used to think that Troy spoke an Indo-European Anatolian language but I like one Tyrsenic, it's cool! But I have a doubt with Razaric, the numerals, and pronouns do not seem to match those of Proto-Kartvelian. Tommian is so highly divergent? It's to have a vague idea to start Huamish ...

--Spinovenator (talk) 15:13, 5 February 2018 (PST)

The Y-DNA haplogroups map you linked to is useful and interesting, but I don't know how to connect the haplogroups to migrations and language families. It seems tempting to connect R1b with Aquan and R1a with IE proper, but these haplogroups separated way earlier from each other (I don't remember the figure but it was in the ballpark of 10,000 to 20,000 years ago - something five-digit with a leading "1") than the split between the two language families (which I date at about 5000 BC). E-V in Greece probably is from the "third" group of Neolithic immigrants from the Levant which I mentioned earlier, I guess. N is Uralic. But what are I1 and I2 from?

Indeed, I grow increasingly unsure about the north-south division of the Paleolithic Homo sapiens in Europe; the genetics points rather at an east-west division. There may have been two Paleolithic waves of immigration, one (younger?) bringing in R1a and R1b, and one (older?) bringing in I1 and I2. The Neolithic immigration brought in G2a, but there was a kind of "backlash" of Paleolithic DNA, I have been told, perhaps by surviving hunter-gatherers turning into warriors and taking over the Neolithic farming communities around them. Who knows? I think I also read somewhere that the Neolithic contribution on the maternal side - mtDNA - is stronger than on the paternal side. Apparently, male hunters mated with female farmers to a large degree.

What regards the connection between Kartvelian and Tyrsenian, I don't know yet. It may be that Proto-Tyrsenian has a complex and convoluted history, involving a Mesolithic language, a Para-Kartvelian language and an Anatolian IE one. But which contributed what? From the Anatolian IE language perhaps came only a few words; the claim by people like Fred Woudhuizen that Etruscan was a descendant of Luwian is bullfrogs. There is no way a language could shed its entire IE heritage like that within a few centuries! (There seem to be some common words, but those are probably just loanwords.) But the resemblances between Etruscan and Kartvelian are hardly better. I'd thus say that Proto-Tyrsenian was a surviving Mesolithic language of western Anatolia which fell under the influence of Kartvelian and IE. (The dominant Y-DNA haplogroup in NW Anatolia is J2a, which is also strong in parts of Italy, if that helps.)

As for Razaric not resembling Kartvelian - the whole Proto-Razaric page is obsolete! That page was put together from a ZBB scratchpad thread (long lost) in the year 2013, which implied a rather hasty way of writing it, and back then I did not consider a Razaric-Kartvelian link. The work you see in the page this discussion page belongs to, I had not done yet back then, and the idea of a Para-Kartvelian Neolithic European language family had not yet surfaced. Back then, I considered the LBK language to be related to IE (the Europic hypothesis), so Proto-Hesperic would have been their language and Razaric a Mesolithic language.

I shall rewrite the Proto-Razaric page soon, at least I shall delete everything that is no longer valid. The phonology will stay, I will either keep it unchanged or make minor amendments (I consider adding aspirated stops and affricates), the rest will GO. However, I have made a local copy of the page, so I can use what I wrote five years ago for any Mesolithic British Isles language I may do in the future.

--WeepingElf (talk) 08:49, 6 February 2018 (PST)

I have found some interesting maps on the spread of the Y-DNA haplogroups R1a and R1b. I don't know how accurate these maps are, though. Both the R1a and R1b migration maps show an expansion out of the Pontic steppe, R1a from the western part into Central Europe, R1b from the eastern part along the Black Sea coast, through the Lower Danube area to Western Europe, both at about the same time stage (ca. 4000-2000 BC). Hmmm. So R1a and R1b are both IE, perhaps Macro-IE. Is R1a IE proper and R1b Aquan? That would mean that Proto-Aquan originated from east of PIE proper!? An interesting twist! And I1 and I2 would then perhaps correspond to the Paleo-Transalpine and Paleo-Mediterranean groups of my scheme.

What regards mtDNA haplogroup maps, there are few of them on the Web. A Google search for "haplogroup maps europe" throws out a lot of Y-DNA maps but few mtDNA maps, and those few mtDNA maps show what probably is the reason: there is not much to be seen on them as they are pretty homogenous. It seems as if the males migrated a lot while the females stayed put, or what?

P.S. I have cleared out the Proto-Razaric page. Currently, there's only phonology there; the rest will be added as I decide on it. I have saved a local copy before I did this; also, old versions can still be accessed via the History tab.

--WeepingElf (talk) 12:18, 6 February 2018 (PST)

I have added a few section titles and the Y-DNA haplogroup map you linked to, combined with a brief discussion thereof, to the history overview.

--WeepingElf (talk) 10:37, 9 February 2018 (PST)

According to the Eupedia page, J2 spread into Anatolia from the southeast when or after the first Neolithic farmers entered Europe. This makes it likely that Trysenian is neither a Macro-Kartvelian language nor a Mesolithic Anatolian one.

--WeepingElf (talk) 09:19, 10 February 2018 (PST)

It makes some sense for the females to stay still. Men are more mobile because they are the ones who direct the hunting theme, it is easier for them to get lost or reach other areas, make incursions, follow migratory animals or look for new lands to hunt. Meanwhile, the females would stay in the villages, and it is normal that if they saw a lost hunter they would surely accept it in their village.

According to Eupedia, R1b it spread across Europe from Anatolia, the first speaker would surely speak an Indo-European Anatolian language, then went to the Balkans to reach the first Italo-Celtic (Urnfield), hence the Celtic sense that this haplogroup extended by Western Europe. So I think we have to look for something better for aquan

Etruscan we consider as nostratic simply, in any case it can access mitian but I do not think there are relations beyond. Although I think it is closer to kartvelian, because Tyrsenian-aegean according to eupedia appeared in the Caucasus, while Kartvelian in the Pontus.

It seems that we are reaching good conclusions. I like the addition of haplogroups to the page, but there are several haplogroups that are also important in Europe, what about ...?

HV: this is curious, eupedia the relationship with magdalenian, it will lead to H and V.

H: It is related to the megalithic culture, bell-beaker and gravettian

V: Only may be Pre-sami presumably

T: it has to be a RATHER MAJORITY group that expanded together with Cardial-Impressed

J2: may be Sumerian, also semitic.

X: Majority in solutrean culture they might be arrived to north america, also found in Starčevo culture

W: Narva culture, is a pre-finnic group.

Q1a and U4: I do not think it's aquan, but certainly these were related to indoeuropean

K: Paleo-Gallic? It seems to be a Caucasian group that spread across Europe after the withdrawal of the ice, important in France, possibly Azilian?

U3: I do not give much importance, but important in jordania, if they had spoken some language it would be something like the romani, maybe minorities that were not completely absorbed.

U5: Paleo-Iberian, I think it could be the old Basque haplogroup before being invaded by the Celts (R1b)

U6: This has an interesting history seems very majority in the Maghreb before the desiccation of the Sahara, then it is reduced by the invasion of E haplogroup.

R1b: before I saw it possible, but now I doubt it's aquan, what do you think?

--Spinovenator (talk) 15:30, 10 February 2018 (PST)

Nice suggestions. Reality probably was much more complex than the scheme I had laid out. But maybe our attempts at connecting Y-DNA haplogroups with language families is utterly misguided anyway, as, as I have said several times, genes and languages do not always travel together, and there are numerous mismatches; also, the time scales are vastly different: for instance, the split between R1a and R1b happened almost 20,000 years ago, and that's fairly recent what regards haplogroup evolution - but twice as old as Proto-Indo-Uralic probably is!

--WeepingElf (talk) 05:58, 11 February 2018 (PST)

Another thought: The main problem with my model seems to be that the "Paleo-Mediterranean" and "Paleo-Transalpine" thing is too simple. There probably were further major migrations between the first peopling of Europe and the Neolithic revolution, involving the haplogroups missing from my list you posted about yesterday. This, combined with the enormous time depths (ca. 45,000 to 50,000 years) the "two" Paleolithic "families" would have, means that the language diversity in Mesolithic Europe must have been enormous - a time-travelling linguist would probably find more than a dozen distinct families and isolates. If pre-colonial North America is a valid model for Mesolithic Europe, one would expect about 20 to 30 units (North America is twice as large as Europe, and has about 50 language families and isolates). For us as conlangers this means that we can happily build little "unrelated" units when it comes to pre-Neolithic lostlangs.

--WeepingElf (talk) 08:54, 11 February 2018 (PST)

I have noticed a BIG problem with your list: some of the items are mtDNA haplogroups (mitochondrial DNA, transmitted in the maternal line), which must be kept separate from Y-DNA haplogroups (Y-chromosome DNA, transmitted in the paternal line). There are pairs of mtDNA and Y-DNA haplogroups with the same designation, but these have nothing to do with each other! So far, I have only considered Y-DNA haplogroups, because the mtDNA haplogroup mix is quite homogenous across Europe and thus doesn't tell us much. Now that I realize that you beefed up the list with mtDNA haplogroups, it turns out that my list does not really miss that much! Please be more attentive in your work, or you'll produce junk!

--WeepingElf (talk) 09:33, 11 February 2018 (PST)

I forgot to say how to tell them apart in the top map on the Eupedia page. It is very easy: those behind the Mars symbols are Y-DNA, those behind the Venus symbols are mtDNA.

--WeepingElf (talk) 12:36, 13 February 2018 (PST)

Sorry for taking so long to reply, I'm missing time! It is true that the list is wrong I did not take that as important, I guess it is not useful. I remembered something about genetics and I think I know why DNAmt is so homogenous. I explain, the males are XY and the females are XX, this supposes that the X chromosome is inherited by both parties, while the Y is only male. So the DNAmt represents both male and female mutations, while the male-only Y-DNA. I do not know if I am right or if I have not explained myself well.

About linguistic diversity, looking at pre-Columbian America, if you expect something similar from Europe there would be 1 language in an area of ​​14699 km ^ 2 approximately, so in Europe (with the current surface), there should be about 692 languages, or perhaps more because the populations had little contact with each other. Now, I do not know how many families could have existed or how many isolations, this only depends on the population movements. A family expands by eliminating others leaving isolations and so on. Interestingly (although I have not found any reference to this, it is my theory), I see some relationship between glaciations (or cold periods) and population movements, more or less every 200 or 300 years there is usually a period of low temperatures , which leads the northern populations to migrate to the south, this would have to be discussed, I have not found anything. Then, do you think the pre-Neolithic Europe are nostratic or dene-caucasian or other unknown?

--Spinovenator (talk) 06:27, 16 February 2018 (PST)

As for mtDNA, that has nothing to do with X chromosomes. Mitochondria are substructures of the cell which contain their own DNA, and the mitochondria are only inherited maternally as those of the sperm do not enter the egg. So all your mtDNA is from your mother, no matter whether you are male or female.

Linguistic diversity is not easy to measure. Counting languages does not work very well - what are distinct languages, and what are dialects of the same language? Counting language families - which seems like a better measure, after all, a hundred languages aren't really much diversity if they descend from a common ancestor spoken only a few hundred years ago - is also not trivial because one has to specify up to which time depth languages are considered to be related. I don't know how deep the 50+ units conventional classification distinguishes in North America are on average, but it looks as if most are not more than 2000 years deep, and there may be language families which are not consensus yet despite being no deeper than IE. If you only consider units less deep than 2000 years, IE and Uralic shatter, and you get almost 20 such units in Europe, not including the Caucasus. That's not far from the "20 to 30 language families" I talked about last Sunday. But let's say that there are perhaps 20 language families and isolates in North America with a maximum depth of 5000 years, which is the commonly assumed time depth of IE and Uralic. Then you'd expect about 10 such families in Mesolithic Europe, and that seems like a reasonable guess to me.

Regarding your question about "Nostratic or Dene-Caucasian", I am unconvinced of the existence of either. Nostratic is the better of the two; it seems as if IE, Uralic and some others are deeply related (> 10,000 years), but the evidence is scarce, and the inclusion of Afroasiatic and Dravidian at least is IMHO unwarranted, and Kartvelian is doubtful. The Mitian languages wouldn't have entered Europe before the Neolithic. And I'd rather place the Proto-Mitian homeland somewhere near Lake Baykal at the end of the last Ice Age, rather than the Near East where Bomhard places Proto-Nostratic. Dene-Caucasian is IMHO just a wastebag into which all languages of Northern Eurasia which are not claimed for Nostratic are swept, nothing else.

--WeepingElf (talk) 10:10, 16 February 2018 (PST)

I am growing ever more sceptical about this "language families and Y-DNA haplogroups" business! Things just don't match nicely, and the haplogroups are far older than the linguistic lineages discussed here. For instance, it seems as if R1b has been around in western Europe since long before anything like Aquan (if that's a thing at all!) entered there. There is also R1b in the Iranian highlands, which of course has nothing to do with Aquan! Genes and languages simply do not travel together reliably enough to yield good matches after thousands of years. --WeepingElf (talk) 13:50, 23 May 2018 (PDT)