Paleo-European languages

Old European is a designation for the (unknown) languages of the first Neolithic farmers in central Europe, who immigrated from the east around the year 5500 BC. Their original homeland probably no longer exists: it is drowned beneath the Black Sea, and was where now is the Bay of Odessa. (Before about 5500 BC, the Black Sea was a freshwater lake - the Euxine Lake - with a level much lower than the present day sea level. Then the rising sea burst through the Bosporus and flooded the Black Sea basin within a few years to almost the present day level.)

The Old European languages are not attested in writing (but see Old European script for a set of undeciphered signs that were used in the easternmost parts of the Old European area, which may or may not have been a writing system). The only access to it we have are place names and especially river names that are found all over central Europe, and possibly loanwords in the Indo-European languages now spoken there. The area across which these Old European river names occur largely coincides with the area where remnants of the central European Neolithic (the so-called Linear Pottery culture) and its daughter cultures can be found.

Hypotheses about the relationships of Old European

There are several hypotheses concerning the relationships of Old European to other, attested languages.

The German linguist Hans Krahe ascribed the Old European hydronymy to an Indo-European language that, according to him, was the common ancestor of Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and possibly Slavic.

However, there are two problems with this hypothesis. First, these languages are not characterized by any shared innovation and do not seem to form a valid node in the Indo-European family tree; second, the Old European river names, while seemingly having Indo-European etymologies, do not reflect the characteristic sound changes of the languages in which they are found and are thus more likely to be borrowed rather than inherited. For example, the Old European river names show a predominant /a/-vocalism which looks quite un-Indo-European, while the vowels /e/ and /o/ which are frequent in Indo-European appear to have been absent.

Another German linguist, Wolfgang Paul Schmid, addressed the first problem by assuming that Krahe's Old European was Proto-Indo-European itself, which he localized in central Europe. This is widely rejected today, and it doesn't solve the second problem.

The second problem was addressed by Theo Vennemann (again, a German linguist) who proposed that Old European was not an Indo-European language at all, but related to Basque. According to Vennemann, 'Vasconic' languages were spoken all across continental Europe west of a line that approximately runs from Riga to Odessa. (East of that line, Uralic was spoken in the north and Indo-European in the south; in the British Isles, Vennemann assumes, an Afro-Asiatic language was spoken.) However, Vennemann's Vasconic etymologies are very weak.

Jörg Rhiemeier assumes that the Old European language was related to, but distinct from Indo-European. Together, Old European and Indo-European form the Europic language family.

Old European conlangs

• Albic by Jörg Rhiemeier
• Thalassan by Rob Haden