The Paleo-European languages, or Old European languages, are the mostly unknown languages that were spoken in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located enti ...

prior to the spread of the

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, ...

and

Uralic The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian ...

families caused by the Bronze Age invasion from the

Eurasian steppe The Eurasian Steppe, also simply called the Great Steppe or the steppes, is the vast steppe ecoregion of Eurasia in the temperate grasslands, savannas and shrublands biome. It stretches through Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova and Tra ...

of pastoralists whose descendant languages dominate the continent today. Today, the vast majority of European populations speak Indo-European languages, but until the

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...

, it was the opposite, with Paleo-European languages of non-Indo-European affiliation dominating the linguistic landscape of Europe. The term Old European languages is also often used more narrowly to refer only to the unknown languages of the first Neolithic European farmers in Southeast (the

Balkan Peninsula The Balkans ( ), also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the whol ...

), Southern, Central and Western Europe, who emigrated from

Anatolia Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The r ...

around 8000–6000 BC, excluding unknown languages of various European hunter gatherers who were eventually absorbed by farming populations by the late

Neolithic Age The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several pa ...

. A similar term, Pre-Indo-European, is used to refer to the disparate languages mostly displaced by speakers of

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...

as they migrated out of their ''Urheimat''. This term thus includes certain Paleo-European languages along with many others spoken in

West Asia Western Asia, West Asia, or Southwest Asia, is the westernmost subregion of the larger geographical region of Asia, as defined by some academics, UN bodies and other institutions. It is almost entirely a part of the Middle East, and includes A ...

Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes the former ...

, and

South Asia South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The region consists of the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.;;;;; ...

before the Proto-Indo-Europeans and their descendants arrived.

Traces of lost Paleo-European languages

The prehistoric Paleolithic and Mesolithic modern human hunter-gatherer Paleo-European languages and Neolithic Anatolian and European farmer languages are not attested in writing (but see Old European script for a set of undeciphered signs that were used in the

Vinča culture The Vinča culture (), also known as Turdaș culture or Turdaș–Vinča culture, is a Neolithic archaeological culture of Southeast Europe, dated to the period 5700–4500 BC or 5300–4700/4500 BC.. Named for its type site, Vinča-Belo Brdo ...

, which may or may not have been a writing system). The only sources for some of them are place names and especially river names that are found all over central and western Europe, and possibly

loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because t ...

s in some Indo-European languages now spoken there.

Attested Paleo-European languages and reconstructed substrates

Paleohispanic languages

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous c ...

(Euskara) – the only surviving language ** Aquitanian – A close relative to, or a direct ancestor of, Modern Basque. ** Proto-Basque * Iberian – Perhaps a relative to Aquitanian and Basque: maybe even ancestral to both, but not confirmed. * Tartessian – Unclassified: possibly related to Iberian, if not related to Indo-European. Other Paleohispanic languages can only be identified indirectly through

toponym Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of '' toponyms'' ( proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name o ...

s, anthroponyms or

theonym A theonym (from Greek ''theos'' (Θεός), "god"'','' attached to ''onoma'' (ὄνομα), "name") is the proper name of a deity. Theonymy, the study of divine proper names, is a branch of onomastics (the study of the etymology, history, and u ...

s cited by Roman and

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

sources. Most inscriptions were found written in the Phoenician or

alphabets. Little or no evidence of paleo-alphabets or

hieroglyph A hieroglyph (Greek for "sacred carvings") was a character of the ancient Egyptian writing system. Logographic scripts that are pictographic in form in a way reminiscent of ancient Egyptian are also sometimes called "hieroglyphs". In Neoplatonis ...

ics is found today; the little material that exists is mostly indecipherable.

Paleo-European languages of Italy

Tyrsenian languages Tyrsenian (also Tyrrhenian or Common Tyrrhenic), named after the Tyrrhenians (Ancient Greek, Ionic: ''Tyrsenoi''), is a proposed extinct family of closely related ancient languages put forward by linguist Helmut Rix (1998), which consists of ...

** Etruscan – in northern and central Italy ** Raetic – in northern Italy and Austria ** Lemnian – in Aegean area * Camunic * Paleo-Sardinian language – possibly related to the extinct native

Iberian language The Iberian language was the language of an indigenous western European people identified by Greek and Roman sources who lived in the eastern and southeastern regions of the Iberian Peninsula in the pre- Migration Era (before about 375 AD). The ...

of the

Iberian peninsula The Iberian Peninsula (), ** * Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica'' ** ** * french: Péninsule Ibérique * mwl, Península Eibérica * eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, defi ...

* Ligurian * North Picene language * Sicanian language

Paleo-European languages of the Aegean area

* Pre-Greek substrate * Minoan *

Eteocretan Eteocretan ( from grc-gre, Ἐτεόκρητες, Eteókrētes, lit. "true Cretans", itself composed from ἐτεός ''eteós'' "true" and Κρής ''Krḗs'' "Cretan") is the pre-Greek language attested in a few alphabetic inscriptions of a ...

may be a descendant of Minoan, but this is uncertain * Cypro-Minoan * Eteocypriot may be a descendant of Cypro-Minoan * Language of the Phaistos Disc, possibly one of the above

North Europe

* Germanic substrate hypothesis * Britain and Ireland ** Goidelic substrate hypothesis * Pre-Finno-Ugric substrate ** Pre-Sami substrate(s) – one or more substrate languages underlying the Sami languages, perhaps based on geographical location **

Palaeo-Laplandic Paleo-Laplandic is a hypothetical group of extinct but related languages spoken in Sápmi (northern Scandinavia). The speakers of Paleo-Laplandic languages switched to Sámi languages, and the languages became extinct around . A considerable a ...

** Pre-Finnic substrate – underlies the development of Proto-Finnic; possibly related to the substrate in Sami

Other

Vasconic substratum hypothesis The Vasconic substrate hypothesis is a proposal that several Western European languages contain remnants of an old language family of Vasconic languages, of which Basque language, Basque is the only surviving member. The proposal was made by the ...

* Albanian substratum hypothesis – possibly related to the substrate in Greek Sometimes Caucasian languages are also included in Paleo-European, but the

Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia (country), Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range ...

region is often considered to be a natural barrier or border region between Asia and Europe.

Neolithic

There is no direct evidence of the languages spoken in the Neolithic. Paleolinguistic attempts to extend the methods of

historical linguistics Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include: # to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages # ...

to the Stone Age have little academic support. Donald Ringe, criticizing scenarios that envision only a small number of Neolithic language families spread over huge areas of Europe, has argued on general principles of language geography applying to "tribal" pre-state societies, and the scant remains of non-Indo-European languages attested in ancient inscriptions, that Neolithic Europe must have been a place of great linguistic diversity, with many

language families A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in his ...

having no recoverable linguistic links to one another, much like western North America before European colonisation. Discussion of hypothetical languages spoken in the European Neolithic is divided into two topics:

Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, ...

and "Pre-Indo-European" languages. Early Indo-European languages are usually assumed to have reached Europe in the

Chalcolithic The Copper Age, also called the Chalcolithic (; from grc-gre, χαλκός ''khalkós'', " copper" and ''líthos'', " stone") or (A)eneolithic (from Latin ''aeneus'' "of copper"), is an archaeological period characterized by regul ...

or early

, with the Yamnaya, Corded Ware or

Beaker culture The Bell Beaker culture, also known as the Bell Beaker complex or Bell Beaker phenomenon, is an archaeological culture named after the inverted-bell beaker drinking vessel used at the very beginning of the European Bronze Age. Arising from ...

s (see also

Kurgan hypothesis The Kurgan hypothesis (also known as the Kurgan theory, Kurgan model, or steppe theory) is the most widely accepted proposal to identify the Proto-Indo-European homeland from which the Indo-European languages spread out throughout Europe and par ...

for related discussions). The

Anatolian hypothesis The Anatolian hypothesis, also known as the Anatolian theory or the sedentary farmer theory, first developed by British archaeologist Colin Renfrew in 1987, proposes that the dispersal of Proto-Indo-Europeans originated in Neolithic Anatolia. ...

postulates arrival of Indo-European languages with the early Neolithic. Conversely, the Kurgan hypothesis maintains that the Indo-European languages arrived in Europe no earlier than the Bronze Age, which is consistent with the findings of genome-wide analysis research published in 2015. Old European hydronymy is taken by

Hans Krahe Hans Krahe (7 February 1898 – 25 June 1965) was a German philologist and linguist, specializing over many decades in the Illyrian languages. He was born in Gelsenkirchen. Work Between 1936 and 1946 he was a professor at the University of W ...

to be the oldest reflection of the early presence of Indo-European in Europe. Theories of "Pre-Indo-European" languages in Europe are built on scant evidence. Basque is a candidate for a descendant of such a language, but since Basque is a

language isolate Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The nu ...

, there is no comparative evidence to build upon. Vennemann nevertheless postulates a " Vasconic" family, which he supposes had co-existed with an "Atlantic" or "Semitidic" (i.e., para-

Semitic Semitic most commonly refers to the Semitic languages, a name used since the 1770s to refer to the language family currently present in West Asia, North and East Africa, and Malta. Semitic may also refer to: Religions * Abrahamic religions ** ...

) group. The theory, however, is rejected by mainstream linguists. Another candidate is the

, which would have given rise to Etruscan and Raetic in the Iron Age. It cannot be ruled out that there were several different language families already in the Neolithic period. In the north, a similar scenario to Indo-European is thought to have occurred, with

Uralic languages The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...

expanding in from the east. In particular, while the

Sami languages Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise ne ...

of the indigenous Sami people belong in the Uralic family, they show considerable

substrate Substrate may refer to: Physical layers *Substrate (biology), the natural environment in which an organism lives, or the surface or medium on which an organism grows or is attached ** Substrate (locomotion), the surface over which an organism lo ...

influence, which is thought to represent one or more extinct older languages. The ancestors of Sami are estimated to have adopted a Uralic language less than 2500 years ago. Some traces of indigenous languages of the Baltic area have been suspected in the

Finnic languages The Finnic (''Fennic'') or more precisely Balto-Finnic (Balto-Fennic, Baltic Finnic, Baltic Fennic) languages constitute a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by the Baltic Finnic peoples. There are around 7 ...

as well, but they are much more modest. There are early loanwords from unidentified non-Indo-European languages in other Uralic languages of Europe, as well.

References

Sources

* * * *