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The Paleo-European languages (sometimes also called Old European languages)[1][2] are the mostly unknown languages that were spoken in Neolithic (c. 7000 – c. 1700 BC) and Bronze Age Europe (c. 3200 – c. 600 BC) prior to the spread of the Indo-European and Uralic families of languages. The vast majority of modern European populations speak Indo-European languages. However, until the Bronze Age, non-Indo-European languages were predominant across the continent.[3] The speakers of Paleo-European languages gradually assimilated into speech communities dominated by Indo-European speakers, leading to their eventual extinction, except for Basque, which remains the only surviving descendant of a Paleo-European language.[4]
A related term, "Pre-Indo-European", refers more generally to the diverse languages that were spoken in Eurasia before the Indo-European migrations. This category thus includes certain Paleo-European languages (apart from those that were replaced by Uralic languages), along with many others from West, Central, and South Asia.
- ^ Woodard 2008: "'Old European' languages survives only as shadows cast across the grammars and lexica of the Indo-European languages"
- ^ Vennemann 2011, p. 480.
- ^ Haarmann 2011, pp. 62–63.
- ^ Haarmann 2005, pp. 194–195.