Borean Languages

Borean Languages

Borean (also Boreal or Boralean) is a hypothetical linguistic macrofamily that encompasses almost all language families except those native to Sub-Saharan Africa, New Guinea, and Australia. The hypothesis proposes that the various languages of Eurasia and adjacent regions are genetically related to each other, and ultimately descend from languages spoken in the Upper Paleolithic in the millennia following the Last Glacial Maximum. The name "Borean", based on Greek βορέας, means "northern". This reflects the fact that the group is held by its proponents to include most language families native to the northern hemisphere, but not those native to the southern hemisphere. Two distinct models of the Borean macrofamily exist: that of Harold C. Fleming and that of Sergei Starostin.