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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 BC to c. 1700 BC) and Bronze Age Europe (c. 3200 BC to 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.