Paleo-European languages

Paleo-European (or Old European) is a designation for the (mostly unknown) languages that were spoken in Europe prior to the spread of the Indo-European family which dominates the continent today. In this sense, Basque and the Caucasian languages are Paleo-European languages (however, the languages spoken today are certainly not identical with the languages that were spoken before the spread of Indo-European - they certainly changed a lot over time).

Traces of lost Paleo-European languages

The prehistoric Paleo-European languages are not attested in writing (but see Old European script for a set of undeciphered signs that were used in the Vinča culture, which may or may not have been a writing system, but are at any rate undeciphered). The only access to them we have are place names and especially river names that are found all over central and western Europe, and possibly loanwords in the Indo-European languages now spoken there.

Theories about Paleo-European languages

There are many theories about these languages. The German linguist Theo Vennemann assumes that most languages of Neolithic Europe were related to Basque, and claims to have found evidence for this in the Old European hydronymy. Most of his colleagues, however, remain unconvinced. Jörg Rhiemeier speculates that some of them - those reflected in the Old European hydronymy - belonged to a language family ("Aquan") related to the Indo-European languages.

It appears as if the Mediterranean region was home to a substantial number of language families - four have survived unto today, and there is evidence for several others still existing in ancient times - while the area north of the Alps seems to have been dominated by a single large family, according to the evidence of the Old European hydronymy, in Late Neolithic times. This complies well with the results of archaeological research on the spread of Neolithic agriculture in Europe: it is widely assumed that in the south, the spread was cultural, i.e. the Mesolithic people adopted farming from neighbours already practicing it, while in the north, it was demic, i.e. by farmers moving in from the east, displacing or assimilating the Mesolithic peoples. Under this model, the Mediterranean Mesolithic linguistic landscape would have changed little but for the spread of Wanderwörter (migratory words) for agricultural concepts, while north of the Alps, the migrating farmers would have established a single new family, preserving from the Mesolithic languages only a few words pertaining to local wildlife and perhaps hunting techniques (though some Mesolithic languages may have survived for some time in residual zones). This is exactly what can be assumed on the grounds of the linguistic evidence.

If anything can be said about the lost Paleo-European languages on the basis of what we find in the attested ones - Basque, the Caucasian languages and Etruscan -, we can say that the Paleo-European languages were synthetic languages with rich inflectional morphology and diverse morphosyntactic alignments (Basque and most Caucasian languages are ergative, Georgian split between accusative and active/stative, Etruscan is accusative). The Caucasian languages have very rich phoneme inventories and seem to always have had, but Basque and Etruscan have more moderate phoneme inventories, perhaps reflecting an old east-west cline.

Attested Paleo-European languages

Living

• Basque
• Northwest Caucasian
• Northeast Caucasian
• Kartvelian

Extinct but fairly richly attested

• Etruscan - possibly not native to Italy but immigrated from the Aegean region in the Late Bronze Age

Fragmentarily attested

• Aquitanian, a close relative of Basque
• Iberian does not show clear affinity to Basque; language is not understood yet
• Tartessian - probably not a Celtic language; language is not understood yet
• Raetic and Lemnian, apparently related to Etruscan
• Vinča language; script - if it is a script at all - undeciphered
• Minoan; script only partially deciphered
• Eteocretan may be a descendant of Minoan, but this is uncertain; language is not understood yet
• Cypro-Minoan; script is not yet deciphered
• Eteocypriot may be a descendant of Cypro-Minoan; language is not understood yet

Hypothetical Paleo-European languages

• Aquan languages, posited based on the Old European hydronymy; according to Rhiemeier, spoken widely across western Europe and related to (or an early diverging branch of) Indo-European
• Atlantic languages; according to Vennemann, related to Semitic and spoken in the British Isles
• Vasco-Caucasian languages; hypothetical family including Basque, Northwest Caucasian, Northeast Caucasian and various extinct languages of Europe; according to Octavià Alexandre, widely spoken in Europe and responsible for substratum loanwords in Indo-European languages; not to be confused with Vasconic
• Vasconic languages, hypothetical relatives of Basque; according to Vennemann, spoken widely across western Europe; not to be confused with Vasco-Caucasian

Paleo-European conlangs

Naturally, this lost world has inspired some conlangers to come up with fictional re-creations of these languages. There are several conlangs which represent Paleo-European languages. Some of these are:

• Alpic by Taylor Selseth
• Eteonoric by various members of the League of Lost Languages
• Hairo by Christian Thalmann
• Hesperic by Jörg Rhiemeier

• Albic
• Alpianic by various members of the League of Lost Languages
• various others, see here

• Maerik by Benct Philip Jonsson
• Thalassan by Rob Haden

See also League of Lost Languages.