Borean (also Boreal or Boralean) is a hypothetical (i.e. proposed) linguistic

macrofamily A macrofamily (also called a superfamily or superphylum) is a term often used in historical linguistics to refer to a hypothetical higher order grouping of languages. Metonymically, the term became associated with the practice of trying to group ...

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 The Andaman Islands () are an archipelago, made up of 200 islands, in the northeastern Indian Ocean about southwest off the coasts of Myanmar's Ayeyarwady Region. Together with the Nicobar Islands to their south, the Andamans serve as a mari ...

. It is considered a

fringe theory A fringe theory is an idea or a viewpoint that differs significantly from the accepted scholarship of the time within its field. Fringe theories include the models and proposals of fringe science, as well as similar ideas in other areas of schola ...

within mainstream linguistics, relying heavily on the discredited

mass comparison Mass comparison is a method developed by Joseph Greenberg to determine the level of genetic relatedness between languages. It is now usually called multilateral comparison. Mass comparison has been referred to as a "methodological deception" an ...

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 Harold Crane Fleming (December 23, 1926 – April 29, 2015) was an American anthropologist and historical linguist specializing in the cultures and languages of the Horn of Africa. As an adherent of the Four Field School of American anth ...

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

(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 Eurasiatic is a hypothetical and controversial language macrofamily proposal that would include many language families historically spoken in northern, western, and southern Eurasia. The idea of a Eurasiatic superfamily dates back more than 100 ...

(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 The Uralic languages ( ), sometimes called the Uralian languages ( ), are spoken predominantly in Europe and North Asia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian. Other languages with speakers abo ...

Altaic The Altaic () languages are a group of languages comprising the Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic language families, with some linguists including the Koreanic and Japonic families. These languages share agglutinative morphology, head-final ...

, and several other language families), Macro-Caucasian (a proposal of

John Bengtson John D. Bengtson (1948-2024) was an American historical and anthropological linguist. He had been president and vice-president of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory, and had served as editor (or co-editor) of the journal '' ...

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 Burushaski (; , ) is a language isolate, spoken by the Burusho people, who predominantly reside in northern Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan. There are also a few hundred speakers of this language in northern Jammu and Kashmir (union territory), Jammu ...

Yeniseian The Yeniseian languages ( ; sometimes known as Yeniseic, Yeniseyan, or Yenisei-Ostyak;" Ostyak" is a concept of areal rather than genetic linguistics. In addition to the Yeniseian languages it also includes the Uralic languages of Khanty and ...

Sino-Tibetan Sino-Tibetan (also referred to as Trans-Himalayan) is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. Around 1.4 billion people speak a Sino-Tibetan language. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 ...

Na-Dene Na-Dene ( ; also Nadene, Na-Dené, Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit, Tlina–Dene) is a family of Native American languages that includes at least the Athabaskan languages, Eyak, and Tlingit languages. Haida was formerly included but is now general ...

, and Amerind. In 2002, Fleming argued that there were not a two large super-phyla distinction between a

Nostratic Nostratic is a hypothetical language macrofamily including many of the language families of northern Eurasia first proposed in 1903. Though a historically important proposal, it is now generally considered a fringe theory. Its exact compositi ...

and a Dené–Caucasian taxon among Borean languages, and that the language kinship between its branches is possibly more complex than a

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 Stephen or Steven is an English first name. It is particularly significant to Christians, as it belonged to Saint Stephen ( ), an early disciple and deacon who, according to the Book of Acts, was stoned to death; he is widely regarded as the firs ...

, 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 A first language (L1), native language, native tongue, or mother tongue is the first language a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongue'' refers ...

'', issue XVIII, p. 143–188, 2013, where he argues that

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

, and is oriented towards the concept of "valid taxon". He rejects

, a proposed macrofamily somewhat broader than

, and withholds judgment on Dené–Caucasian, a proposal that would encompass

, 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 Morris Swadesh ( ; January 22, 1909 – July 20, 1967) was an American linguist who specialized in comparative and historical linguistics, and developed his mature career at UNAM in Mexico. Swadesh was born in Massachusetts to Bessarabian Jewi ...

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

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 The Caucasian race (also Caucasoid, Europid, or Europoid) is an obsolete racial classification of humans based on a now-disproven theory of biological race. The ''Caucasian race'' was historically regarded as a biological taxon which, dependin ...

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)

, 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) ''Mother Tongue'' is an annual academic journal published by the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory (ASLIP) that has been published since 1995.

, 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 Hurro-Urartian is an extinct language family of the Ancient Near East, comprising only two known languages: Hurrian and Urartian. Origins It is often assumed that the Hurro-Urartian languages, or a pre-split Proto-Hurro-Urartian language, were ...

*** Hattian ** a) (3) *** Kartvelian ** b) (4) *** Dravidian ** d) (5) ***

**** Tyrsenian (including

Etruscan __NOTOC__ Etruscan may refer to: Ancient civilization *Etruscan civilization (1st millennium BC) and related things: **Etruscan language ** Etruscan architecture **Etruscan art **Etruscan cities **Etruscan coins **Etruscan history **Etruscan myt ...

) ****

****

Yukaghir The Yukaghirs, or Yukagirs ( (), ), are a Siberian ethnic group in the Russian Far East, living in the basin of the Kolyma River. Geographic distribution The Tundra Yukaghirs live in the Lower Kolyma region in the Sakha Republic; the Taiga Y ...

****

Eskimo–Aleut The Eskaleut ( ), Eskimo–Aleut or Inuit–Yupik–Unangan languages are a language family native to the northern portions of the North American continent, and a small part of northeastern Asia. Languages in the family are indigenous to parts of ...

**** Chukotko-Kamchatkan ( Chukotian) ****

***** Turkic ***** Mongolic ***** Tungusic ****

Koreanic Koreanic is a small language family consisting of the Korean and Jeju languages. The latter is often described as a dialect of Korean but is mutually unintelligible with mainland Korean varieties. Alexander Vovin suggested that the Yukjin dial ...

**** Japonic **** Gilyak (

Nivkh Nivkh or Amuric or Gilyak may refer to: * Nivkh people (''Nivkhs'') or Gilyak people (''Gilyaks'') * Nivkh languages or Gilyak languages * Gilyak class gunboat, ''Gilyak'' class gunboat, such as the Russian gunboat Korietz#Second gunboat, second R ...

) **** Ainu (?) (tentative inclusion) ** e) (6) *** Vasco-Caucasic ( Vasco-Caucasian) (based on a

proposal) **** North Caucasian ***** Northeast Caucasian ***** Northwest Caucasian ****

** f) (7) ***

***

** g) (8) ***

** h) (9) ***

** i) (10) *** Amerind (outlined by Joseph Greenberg) (a valid taxon with large contrasts among sub-taxa) *

Austric The Austric languages are a proposed language family that includes the Austronesian languages spoken in Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Madagascar, as well as Kra–Dai and Austroasiatic languages spoken in Mainland Sou ...

(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 The Austro-Tai languages, sometimes also Austro-Thai languages, are a proposed language family that comprises the Austronesian languages and Kra–Dai languages. Related proposals include Austric ( Wilhelm Schmidt in 1906) and Sino-Austronesian ...

***

Austronesian Austronesian may refer to: *The Austronesian languages *The historical Austronesian peoples The Austronesian people, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples who have settled in Taiwan, maritime Sout ...

*** Kra-Dai ( Tai-Kadai, Daic) ** Hmong-Mien ( Miao-Yao) **

Austroasiatic The Austroasiatic languages ( ) are a large language family spoken throughout Mainland Southeast Asia, South Asia and East Asia. These languages are natively spoken by the majority of the population in Vietnam and Cambodia, and by minority popu ...

** Ainu (?)

Starostin's model

As envisaged by

(2002), Borean is divided into two groups, Nostratic (''sensu lato'', consisting of

and Afroasiatic) and Dene–Daic, the latter consisting of the Dené–Caucasian and

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

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 Ilia Iosifovich Peiros (; born 1948) is a Russian linguist who specializes in the historical linguistics of East Asia. Peiros is a well-known scholar in the Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics, known for its work on long-range comparative l ...

, and

Georgiy Starostin Georgiy Sergeevich "George" Starostin (; born 4 July 1976) is a Russian linguist. He is the son of the late historical linguist Sergei Starostin (1953–2005), and his work largely continues his father's. He is also known as a self-published mu ...

maintain that the comparative method has provided strong evidence for some linguistic superfamilies ( Dené-Caucasian and

), but not so far for others ( Afroasiatic and

). 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" **

(

, Holger Pedersen 1903) ***

(widely rejected,

2000) ****

(widely recognized family) ****

(widely rejected;

Roy Andrew Miller Roy Andrew Miller (September 5, 1924 – August 22, 2014) was an American linguist best known as the author of several books on Japanese language and linguistics, and for his advocacy of Korean and Japanese as members of the proposed Alta ...

1971,

Gustaf John Ramstedt Gustaf John Ramstedt (October 22, 1873 – November 25, 1950) was a Finnish diplomat, orientalist and linguist. He was also an early Finnish Esperantist, and chairman of the Esperanto-Association of Finland. Biography Ramstedt was born in Eken� ...

1952,

Matthias Castrén Matthias Alexander Castrén (2 December 1813 – 7 May 1852) was a Finnish Swedish ethnologist and philologist who was a pioneer in the study of the Uralic languages. He was an educator, author and linguist at the University of Helsinki. Castrén ...

1844) ***** Japonic (widely recognized family) *****

(widely recognized family) ***** Turkic (widely recognized family) ***** Tungusic (widely recognized family) ***** Mongolic (widely recognized family) ****

(widely recognized family) ****

Paleo-Siberian The Paleo-Siberian languages are several language isolates and small language families spoken in parts of Siberia. They are not known to have any genetic relationship to each other; their only common link is that they are held to have antedated ...

(phylogenetic unity widely rejected) *****

(widely recognized family) ***** Chukotko-Kamchatkan (widely recognized family) *****

(language isolate) *****

(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 Edward J. Vajda (Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, September 10, 1958 as Edward M. Johnson; changed his name in 1981) is a historical linguist at Western Washington University, Washington. He is known for his work on the proposed Dené–Yeniseia ...

2008) ****

Na-Dené Na-Dene ( ; also Nadene, Na-Dené, Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit, Tlina–Dene) is a family of Native American languages that includes at least the Athabaskan languages, Eyak, and Tlingit languages. Haida was formerly included but is now general ...

(widely recognized family) ****

(language isolate) ****

Iberian Iberian refers to Iberia. Most commonly Iberian refers to: *Someone or something originating in the Iberian Peninsula, namely from Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar and Andorra. The term ''Iberian'' is also used to refer to anything pertaining to the fo ...

(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) *****

(widely recognized family) *****

(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) *****

(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) ***

(speculative, Wilhelm Schmidt 1906) ****

(speculative, Paul Benedict 1942) *****

(widely recognized family) ***** Tai–Kadai (widely recognized family) **** Hmong–Mien (widely recognized family) ****

(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 Allan R. Bomhard (born July 10 1943) is an American independent scholar writing books and predominantly self-published papers in the field of comparative linguistics and Buddhism. He is part of a small group of proponents of the Nostratic hypot ...

argues that Sumerian did not descend from a daughter language of Proto-

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

than to other language families within

and that the differences are due to the fact that Kartvelian became separated from

at a very early date.

Status of the hypothesis

Linguist

Asya Pereltsvaig Asya Pereltsvaig (; born 1972 in Leningrad, USSR) is a Russian-American linguist, writer, and educator. Life Pereltsvaig has a PhD in Linguistics from McGill University in 2001, with a dissertation entitled, "On the nature of intra-clausal rel ...

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

Fleming's model

Starostin's model

Jäger (2015)

Other languages

Sumerian

Kartvelian

Status of the hypothesis

See also

References

Further reading

External links