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

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 lan ...

families caused by the Bronze Age invasion from the Eurasian steppe 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 prin ...

, 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 points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...

(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 around 8000–6000 BC, excluding unknown languages of various European hunter gatherers who were eventually absorbed by farming populations by the late Neolithic Age. A similar term, Pre-Indo-European, is used to refer to the disparate languages mostly displaced by speakers of Proto-Indo-European as they migrated out of their ''Urheimat''. This term thus includes certain Paleo-European languages along with many others spoken in West Asia, Central Asia, and South Asia 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 loanwords 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 co ...

(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 toponyms,

anthroponym Anthroponymy (also anthroponymics or anthroponomastics, from Ancient Greek ἄνθρωπος ''anthrōpos'' / 'human', and ὄνομα ''onoma'' / 'name') is the study of ''anthroponyms'', the proper names of human beings, both individual and c ...

s or theonyms cited by

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...

and Greek sources. Most inscriptions were found written in the Phoenician or Greek alphabets. Little or no evidence of paleo-alphabets or hieroglyphics is found today; the little material that exists is mostly indecipherable.

Paleo-European languages of Italy

* Tyrsenian languages ** 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 of the Iberian peninsula * Ligurian * North Picene language *

Sicanian language The Sicani ( Ancient Greek Σῐκᾱνοί ''Sikānoí'') or Sicanians were one of three ancient peoples of Sicily present at the time of Phoenician and Greek colonization. The Sicani dwelt east of the Elymians and west of the Sicels, having, a ...

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 an ...

may be a descendant of Minoan, but this is uncertain *

Cypro-Minoan The Cypro-Minoan syllabary (CM) is an undeciphered syllabary used on the island of Cyprus during the late Bronze Age (c. 1550–1050 BC). The term "Cypro-Minoan" was coined by Arthur Evans in 1909 based on its visual similarity to Linear A on M ...

Eteocypriot Eteocypriot is an extinct pre-Indo-European language that was spoken in Cyprus by the pre-Hellenic population until the Iron Age. The name means "true" or "original Cypriot" parallel to Eteocretan, both of which names are used by modern schola ...

may be a descendant of Cypro-Minoan * Language of the

Phaistos Disc The Phaistos Disc (also spelled Phaistos Disk, Phaestos Disc) is a disk of fired clay from the Minoan palace of Phaistos on the island of Crete, possibly dating to the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age (second millennium BC). The disk is about i ...

, possibly one of the above

North Europe

* Germanic substrate hypothesis * Britain and Ireland **

Goidelic substrate hypothesis The Goidelic substrate hypothesis refers to the hypothesized language or languages spoken in Ireland before the Iron Age arrival of the Goidelic languages. Hypothesis of non-Indo-European languages Ireland was settled, like the rest of northern ...

* Pre-Finno-Ugric substrate ** Pre-Sami substrate(s) – one or more substrate languages underlying the Sami languages, perhaps based on geographical location ** Palaeo-Laplandic ** 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 is the only surviving member. The proposal was made by the German linguist ...

* Albanian substratum hypothesis – possibly related to the substrate in Greek Sometimes

Caucasian languages The Caucasian languages comprise a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than ten million people in and around the Caucasus Mountains, which lie between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Linguistic comparison allows ...

are also included in Paleo-European, but the Caucasus 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 to the Stone Age have little academic support.

Donald Ringe Donald "Don" Ringe () is an American linguist and Indo-Europeanist. Ringe graduated from University of Kentucky and then received a Master of Philosophy in Linguistics as a Marshall Scholar from the University of Oxford. He received Ph.D in l ...

, 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 Language geography is the branch of human geography that studies the geographic distribution of language(s) or its constituent elements. Linguistic geography can also refer to studies of how people talk about the landscape. For example, toponymy ...

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

, with the Yamnaya,

Corded Ware The Corded Ware culture comprises a broad archaeological horizon of Europe between ca. 3000 BC – 2350 BC, thus from the late Neolithic, through the Copper Age, and ending in the early Bronze Age. Corded Ware culture encompassed a ...

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 ar ...

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 Old European (german: Alteuropäisch) is the term used by Hans Krahe (1964) for the language of the oldest reconstructed stratum of European hydronymy (river names) in Central and Western Europe.Hans Krahe, ''Unsere ältesten Flussnamen'', Wies ...

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, there is no comparative evidence to build upon. Vennemann nevertheless postulates a "

Vasconic The Vasconic languages (from Latin 'Basque') are a putative family of languages that includes Basque and the extinct Aquitanian language. The extinct Iberian language is sometimes putatively included. The concept of the Vasconic languages is o ...

" family, which he supposes had co-existed with an "Atlantic" or "Semitidic" (i.e., para- Semitic) group. The theory, however, is rejected by mainstream linguists. Another candidate is the Tyrsenian languages, 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 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 net ...

of the indigenous

Sami people 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 n ...

belong in the Uralic family, they show considerable substrate 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 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

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