Language Families, Archaeology and History of

Abstract

The relationship between the archeological and linguistic records of human activity is very broad, extending from modern human language origins amongst our Paleolithic forebears onward into the usage of 'texts' (both written and oral) to assist interpretation of the archeological record of recent human history. This article, however, will be more specific, and is concerned essentially with late prehistory, prior to the development of written records, and with the question of how the world's major language families have originated and spread. It is also concerned with how linguistic information on this topic can be integrated with the archeological record of human expansion and migration during the past 10 000 years. This time span is chosen because extant language families shed little light on human affairs during the Pleistocene (2.6 million to 12 000 years ago), given that languages change constantly in ways that have slowly but inevitably erased traces of once-existing Pleistocene linguistic landscapes.