Borean (also Boreal or Boralean) is a hypothetical (i.e. proposed) linguistic macrofamily that encompasses almost all language families worldwide except those native to the

Americas The Americas, sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North America and South America.''Webster's New World College Dictionary'', 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio. When viewed as a sing ...

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

Oceania Oceania ( , ) is a region, geographical region including Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Outside of the English-speaking world, Oceania is generally considered a continent, while Mainland Australia is regarded as its co ...

, and the Andaman Islands. It is considered a fringe theory within mainstream linguistics, relying heavily on the discredited mass comparison method to derive genetic relationships. Borean proposes that the various languages spoken in

Eurasia Eurasia ( , ) is a continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. According to some geographers, Physical geography, physiographically, Eurasia is a single supercontinent. The concept of Europe and Asia as distinct continents d ...

and adjacent regions have a genealogical relationship, and ultimately descend from languages spoken during the

Upper Paleolithic The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories ...

in the millennia following the

Last Glacial Maximum The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), also referred to as the Last Glacial Coldest Period, was the most recent time during the Last Glacial Period where ice sheets were at their greatest extent between 26,000 and 20,000 years ago. Ice sheets covered m ...

. The name ''Borean'' is based on the Greek βορέας, and means "northern". This reflects the fact that the group is held to include most language families that are native to the

northern hemisphere The Northern Hemisphere is the half of Earth that is north of the equator. For other planets in the Solar System, north is defined by humans as being in the same celestial sphere, celestial hemisphere relative to the invariable plane of the Solar ...

. Two distinct models of Borean exist: that of Harold C. Fleming and that of

Sergei Starostin Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin (; March 24, 1953 – September 30, 2005) was a Russian historical linguistics, historical linguist and philology, philologist, perhaps best known for his reconstructions of hypothetical proto-languages, including hi ...

Fleming's model

The concept is due to Harold C. Fleming (1987), who proposed such a "mega-super-phylum" for the languages of Eurasia, termed ''Borean'' or ''Boreal'' in Fleming (1991) and later publications. In Fleming's model, Borean includes ten different groups: Afrasian (his term for Afroasiatic), Kartvelian, Dravidian, a group comprising Sumerian, Elamitic, and some other extinct languages of the ancient

Near East The Near East () is a transcontinental region around the Eastern Mediterranean encompassing the historical Fertile Crescent, the Levant, Anatolia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and coastal areas of the Arabian Peninsula. The term was invented in the 20th ...

, Eurasiatic (a proposal of

Joseph Greenberg Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages. Life Early life and education Joseph Greenberg was born on M ...

that includes

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...

, Uralic, Altaic, and several other language families), Macro-Caucasian (a proposal of John Bengtson that includes

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 ...

and Burushaski), Yeniseian, Sino-Tibetan, Na-Dene, and Amerind. In 2002, Fleming argued that there were not a two large super-phyla distinction between a Nostratic and a Dené–Caucasian taxon among Borean languages, and that the language kinship between its branches is possibly more complex than a Nostratic versus a Dené–Caucasian super-phyla. However, in 2013, Fleming had changed his view about this issue in a joint article with Stephen L. Zegura, James B. Harrod, John D. Bengtson and Shomarka O.Y. Keita – "The Early Dispersions of Homo Sapiens sapiens and proto-Human from Africa." in '' Mother Tongue'', issue XVIII, p. 143–188, 2013, where he argues that Nostratic and Dene-Caucasian as language phyla within Borean is a hypothesis that is well grounded and convincing. Fleming writes that his work on Borean is inspired by

's exploration of Eurasiatic, and is oriented towards the concept of "valid taxon". He rejects Nostratic, a proposed macrofamily somewhat broader than Eurasiatic, and withholds judgment on Dené–Caucasian, a proposal that would encompass Sino-Tibetan, Yeniseian,

, and several other language families and isolates. Fleming calls Borean a "phyletic chain" rather than a super-phylum. He notes that his model of Borean is similar to Morris Swadesh's Vasco-Dene proposal, although he also sees similarities between Vasco-Dene and Dené–Caucasian. He sees Borean as closely associated with the appearance of the

in the

Levant The Levant ( ) is the subregion that borders the Eastern Mediterranean, Eastern Mediterranean sea to the west, and forms the core of West Asia and the political term, Middle East, ''Middle East''. In its narrowest sense, which is in use toda ...

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

, and western Eurasia from 50 thousand to 45 thousand years ago, and observes that it is primarily associated with

human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') or modern humans are the most common and widespread species of primate, and the last surviving species of the genus ''Homo''. They are Hominidae, great apes characterized by their Prehistory of nakedness and clothing ...

populations of Caucasoid and Northern Mongoloid physical appearance, the exceptions being southern

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

, southern

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

, southwestern

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

, northern

Nigeria Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...

, and the Chad Republic. The phylogenetic composition of Borean (noncommital about higher linkages within the whole) according to Fleming, Bengtson, Zegura, Harrod, and Keita (2013) Harold C. Fleming, Stephen L. Zegura, James B. Harrod, John D. Bengtson and Shomarka O.Y. Keita – "The Early Dispersions of Homo Sapiens sapiens and proto-Human from Africa." in Mother Tongue (journal), issue XVIII, pp. 143–188, 2013 is as follows: * "Borean" (Phyletic Chain) ** (1) *** Afrasian (Afroasiatic) ** c) (2) (strongly different languages between themselves and aberrant in its relationship to the other Borean phyla and language families) *** Sumerian ***

Elamite Elamite, also known as Hatamtite and formerly as Scythic, Median, Amardian, Anshanian and Susian, is an extinct language that was spoken by the ancient Elamites. It was recorded in what is now southwestern Iran from 2600 BC to 330 BC. Elamite i ...

*** Hurro-Urartian *** Hattian ** a) (3) *** Kartvelian ** b) (4) *** Dravidian ** d) (5) *** Eurasiatic **** Tyrsenian (including Etruscan) ****

**** Uralic **** Yukaghir **** Eskimo–Aleut **** Chukotko-Kamchatkan ( Chukotian) **** Altaic ***** Turkic ***** Mongolic ***** Tungusic **** Koreanic **** Japonic **** Gilyak ( Nivkh) **** Ainu (?) (tentative inclusion) ** e) (6) *** Vasco-Caucasic ( Vasco-Caucasian) (based on a John Bengtson proposal) **** North Caucasian ***** Northeast Caucasian ***** Northwest Caucasian ****

** f) (7) *** Burushaski *** Yeniseian ** g) (8) *** Sino-Tibetan ** h) (9) *** Na-Dene ** i) (10) *** Amerind (outlined by Joseph Greenberg) (a valid taxon with large contrasts among sub-taxa) * Austric (not included in Borean) (Fleming et al. are not sure if it is or not more closely related to Borean, that is, if Borean and Austric have an Austric-Borean common ancestor or if Austric is not closer to Borean than to other major language super-phyla) ** Austro-Tai *** Austronesian *** Kra-Dai ( Tai-Kadai, Daic) ** Hmong-Mien ( Miao-Yao) ** Austroasiatic ** Ainu (?)

Starostin's model

As envisaged by

(2002), Borean is divided into two groups, Nostratic (''sensu lato'', consisting of Eurasiatic and Afroasiatic) and Dene–Daic, the latter consisting of the Dené–Caucasian and Austric macrofamilies. Starostin tentatively dates the Borean proto-language to the Upper Paleolithic, approximately 16 thousand years ago. Starostin's model of Borean would thus include most languages of

, as well as the Afroasiatic languages of North Africa and the Horn of Africa, and the Eskimo–Aleut and the Na-Dene languages of the

New World The term "New World" is used to describe the majority of lands of Earth's Western Hemisphere, particularly the Americas, and sometimes Oceania."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: ...

Murray Gell-Mann Murray Gell-Mann (; September 15, 1929 – May 24, 2019) was an American theoretical physicist who played a preeminent role in the development of the theory of elementary particles. Gell-Mann introduced the concept of quarks as the funda ...

, Ilia Peiros, and Georgiy Starostin maintain that the comparative method has provided strong evidence for some linguistic superfamilies ( Dené-Caucasian and Eurasiatic), but not so far for others ( Afroasiatic and Austric). Their view is that since some of these families have not yet been reconstructed and others still require improvement, it is impossible to apply the strict comparative method to even older and larger groups. However, they consider this only a technical rather than a theoretical problem, and reject the idea that linguistic relationships further back in time than 10,000 years before the present cannot be reconstructed, since the "main objects of research in this case are not modern languages, but reconstructed proto-languages which turn out to be more similar to one another than their modern day descendants". They believe that good reconstructions of superfamilies such as Eurasiatic will eventually help in investigating still deeper linguistic relationships. While such 'ultra-deep' relationships can currently be discussed only on a speculative level, they maintain that the numerous morphemic similarities between language families of Eurasia, many of which Sergei Starostin compiled into a special database that he later supplemented by his own findings, are unlikely to be due to chance, making it possible to formulate a Borean super-superfamily hypothesis. They have also suggested possible links between 'Borean' and other families. In their view comparisons with 'Borean' data suggest that

Khoisan Khoisan ( ) or () is an Hypernymy and hyponymy, umbrella term for the various Indigenous peoples of Africa, indigenous peoples of Southern Africa who traditionally speak non-Bantu languages, combining the Khoekhoen and the San people, Sān peo ...

cannot be included within it but that more distant connections on an even deeper level might be possible, that how the African superfamilies Niger–Congo, East Sudanic,

Central Sudanic Central Sudanic is a family of about sixty languages that have been included in the proposed Nilo-Saharan language family. Central Sudanic languages are spoken in the Central African Republic, Chad, Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda, Congo (DRC), Nige ...

and Kordofanian are related to Borean remains to be investigated, that the situation with the native languages of the Americas remains unresolved, and that while there are some lexical similarities between Borean and the

Trans–New Guinea languages Trans–New Guinea (TNG) is an extensive Language family, family of Papuan languages spoken on the island of New Guinea and neighboring islands, a region corresponding to the country Papua New Guinea as well as Western New Guinea, parts of Indone ...

, these remain too scarce to establish a firm connection. They comment that while preliminary data indicates possible connections between Borean and some superfamilies from Africa, the Americas, and the Indo-Pacific region further research is needed to determine whether these additional superfamilies are related to Borean or unidentified branches of it.Murray Gell-Mann et al. (2009)
Distant Language Relationship:The Current Perspective
, ''Journal of Language Relationship·Вопросы языкового родства'' Gell-Mann ''et al.'' note that their proposed model of Borean differs significantly from that of Fleming. Sergei Starostin died prematurely in 2005 and his hypothesis remains in a preliminary form, with much of the material he collected available online. The phylogenetic composition of Borean according to Starostin is as follows: * "Borean" ** Nostratic ( fringe theory, Holger Pedersen 1903) *** Eurasiatic (widely rejected,

2000) ****

(widely recognized family) **** Altaic (widely rejected; Roy Andrew Miller 1971, Gustaf John Ramstedt 1952, Matthias Castrén 1844) ***** Japonic (widely recognized family) ***** Koreanic (widely recognized family) ***** Turkic (widely recognized family) ***** Tungusic (widely recognized family) ***** Mongolic (widely recognized family) **** Uralic (widely recognized family) **** Paleo-Siberian (phylogenetic unity widely rejected) ***** Eskimo–Aleut (widely recognized family) ***** Chukotko-Kamchatkan (widely recognized family) ***** Yukaghir (language isolate) ***** Nivkh (language isolate) **** Kartvelian (widely recognized family) **** Dravidian (widely recognized family) *** Afroasiatic (widely recognized family) ** Dene–Daic (widely rejected, Starostin 2005) *** Dené–Caucasian (widely rejected, Nikolayev 1991; expanded by Bengtson 1997), cf. Dené–Yeniseian ( Edward Vajda 2008) **** Na-Dené (widely recognized family) ****

(language isolate) **** Iberian (language isolate; not explicitly mentioned in Starostin's tree diagram, but usually seen as likely belonging to a common proto-family with Basque) **** Sino-Caucasian (widely rejected, Starostin 2006) ***** Sino-Tibetan (widely recognized family) ***** Yeniseian (widely recognized family) ***** Burushaski (language isolate) ***** North Caucasian (widely rejected; Nikolayev & Starostin 1994) ****** Northeast Caucasian (widely recognized family) ****** Northwest Caucasian (widely recognized family) ***** Hattic (language isolate; not explicitly mentioned in Starostin's tree diagram, but in other works by him and his colleagues often associated with North Caucasian or treated as an independent branch of Dené–Caucasian) ***** Hurro-Urartian (widely recognized family; not explicitly mentioned in Starostin's tree diagram, but in other works by him and his colleagues often associated with North Caucasian or treated as an independent branch of Dené–Caucasian) *** Austric (speculative, Wilhelm Schmidt 1906) **** Austro-Tai (speculative, Paul Benedict 1942) ***** Austronesian (widely recognized family) ***** Tai–Kadai (widely recognized family) **** Hmong–Mien (widely recognized family) **** Austroasiatic (widely recognized family) ** Ainu (language isolate; not explicitly mentioned in Starostin's tree diagram, but in other works by him and his colleagues mostly associated with Austric) ** Sumerian (language isolate; not explicitly mentioned in Starostin's tree diagram, but in other works by him and his colleagues mostly associated with Dene–Daic or Nostratic) **

(language isolate; not explicitly mentioned in Starostin's tree diagram, but in other works by him and his colleagues mostly associated with Dene–Daic or Nostratic)

Jäger (2015)

A computational phylogenetic analysis by Jäger (2015) did not support the Borean macrophylum in its entirety, but provided the following phylogeny of language families in Eurasia:

Other languages

Sumerian

Allan Bomhard argues that Sumerian did not descend from a daughter language of Proto- Nostratic but from a sister language of it. In other words, Sumerian descended from an older common ancestor language with Proto-Nostratic and did not descend directly from it; that is, Sumerian was closer to Nostratic but not a member of it.BOMHARD, Allan. (2018). ''A Comprehensive Introduction to Nostratic Comparative Linguistics'', p. 7

Kartvelian

Bomhard argues that Kartvelian is closer to Eurasiatic than to other language families within Nostratic and that the differences are due to the fact that Kartvelian became separated from Eurasiatic at a very early date.

Status of the hypothesis

Linguist Asya Pereltsvaig states in ''Languages of the World: An Introduction'' that both versions of the Borean hypothesis are "controversial and tentative".

References

External links

The dictionary of reconstructions
{{Long-range comparative linguistics Proposed language families Upper Paleolithic