Interdisciplinary and linguistic evidence for Palaeolithic continuity of Indo-European...
Mario Alinei
Interdisciplinary and linguistic evidence for Palaeolithic continuity of Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic populations in Eurasia, with an excursus on Slavic ethnogenesis
This contribution is based on my recent work on the problem of the origins of Indo-European (= IE) languages (Alinei 1996, 1998, 2000ab, 2001, 2002) – and lately on Etruscan (Alinei 2003) –, and is divided in five parts: (A) the first outlines the three presently competing theories on the origins of IE languages; (B) the second summarizes the converging conclusions reached by different sciences on the problem of the origin of language and languages in general; (C) the third surveys recent theories on the origins of non IE languages in Europe; (D) the fourth illustrates examples of how the IE linguistic record can be read in the light of the Paleolithic Continuity Theory, and in comparison with the two competing theories; (E) the fifth concerns the specific problem of the Slavic ethnogenesis.