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Languages in prehistoric europe north of the alps

Languages in prehistoric Europe north of the Alps Theo Vennemann gen Nierfeld University of Munich I would like to give a brief survey of my views of the linguistic prehistory of Europe north of the Alps by which I mean more generally Europe north of the main divide which extends from the Pyrenees in the southwest to the northern Balkans in the east or north-east relatively speaking I will say nothing about the Uralic languages and I will also remain silent about possible further languages that may have extended to the area north of the divide but that we really think of as belonging to the south After a very brief synopsis of the scope and contents of the theory I would like to formulate a number of theses or propositions with explanations and with references I begin with a brief sketch from Vennemann a which may be viewed as an illustration of thesis G G for general bachground G Languages of three genetic groups were spoken in prehistoric Europe north of the Alps Old European Atlantic West Indo-European To understand the prehistoric linguistic development of Europe one has to keep in mind that the relevant time to consider is relatively short There naturally will have been languages in Europe north of the Alps for tens of thousands of years but in a very precise sense they do not matter During the last ice age the region between the polar ice which reached south into Great Britain and Northern Germany on one hand and the Alpine ice which reached north into regions which are now densely populated this region between two formidable ice sheets were inhospitable to human beings Human beings surviving there as hunters ?shers and gatherers numbered very few and experience shows that when people with more advanced E g the languages to which Etruscan and Rh? tian belong if Rix is right in his assumption that the Rh? tic language or languages were relatives of the the Etruscan language spoken in Southern and Northern Tyrol and possibly beyond CVennemann ??Languages in prehistoric Europe north of the Alps ? page economic systems such as herdsmen and agriculturalists enter such a region the languages of the earlier populations vanish and usually without leaving many if any traces in the languages of the newcomers The point of this consideration is that the climate in Europe north of the Alps only improved to support large populations about ten thousand years ago but then rather rapidly creating nearly subtropical weather conditions until about six thousand years ago G The three genetic groups of prehistoric Europe north of the Alps had the following ?liations Old European Vasconic Atlantic Semitidic West Indo-European Indo-European Vasconic Semitidic Basque Old European Semitic Atlantic Point The Old European languages I consider Vasconic i e related to contemporary Basque the only survivor of the Vasconic family of languages Point The Atlantic languages I consider Hamito-Semitic There exist two views of Semitic a wider one which includes Egyptian and LibycoBerber