The prehistory of European languages

Abstract

This chapter deals with the prehistory of the European languages from the earliest arrival of modern humans in the late Stone Age until the dawn of history, marked by the attestation of written records in Europe from the second millennium BC onwards (see Appendix for a timeline). Its aim is to give an overview of the main developments and to point out the main results of recent research as well as to report on current discussions. One central topic will be language contact during the period of the Neolithic until the beginning of the Iron Age, in particular the impact of substrate languages on the Indo-European languages and the Indo-European superstrate in the Uralic languages. This chapter is structured as follows: Section two deals with Europe before the Neolithic period. In section three the Neolithic population movements are addressed in connection with the process of agriculturalization and the languages that entered Europe during this time. Section four discusses the linguistic effects of the Neolithic developments, focusing in particular on the Vasconic Theory by Theo Vennemann. The final section presents the linguistic map of Europe before the arrival of the Iron Age and sums up the most important results.