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Borean

Eurasian Language Families

Borean is a hypothetical linguistic macrofamily that would encompass almost all language families worldwide except those native to sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, New Guinea and the Andaman Islands. It is considered a fringe theory within mainstream linguistics, relying heavily on the disputed mass comparison method to derive genetic relationships. Borean proposes that the languages spoken in Eurasia and adjacent regions have a genealogical relationship and ultimately descend from languages spoken during the Upper Paleolithic in the millennia following the Last Glacial Maximum. Two distinct models of Borean exist, one from Harold C. Fleming and one from Sergei Starostin.

Facts
Disputed
Region
Eurasia, sometimes the Americas 1
Proto-Language Status
Hypothetical; Starostin tentatively dates Proto-Borean to about 16 thousand years ago 1
Sources
1. Borean languages (Wikipedia)
  • Infobox, Geographic distribution
    Geographic distribution: Eurasia, sometimes the Americas
  • Proto-language dating
    Starostin tentatively dates the Borean proto-language to the Upper Paleolithic, approximately 16 thousand years ago.
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