Tucked behind mountains, Dravidian languages, Nihali in south india potentially & Basque in france/spain are the only languages that seem to have somewhat survived the invasions of Indo European men across Europe, Central Asia & South Asia. These languages and communities are stateless – still deeply oppressed within Indo European colonization. The fate of countless others are worse off: coopted as substrates; colonized into extinction and/or lost so we are left but to hypothesize:
Northern Europe
- most substrate languages are hypothesized (Pictish, Germanic, Goidelic, Pre Sami, Palaeo Laplandic, Pre Finnic)
“Portugal”
- Tartessian
“Spain”
- Iberian: unrounded vowels appear more than rounded;
“France”
- Basque
- Aquitanian
“Italy”
- Etruscan, Veneto through Campania: >700 BCE; isolate? Tyrsenian? influenced Rome/Latin; words were continuous in earlier inscriptions; right to left script; agglutinative; heavy stress on first syllable – possible reason for ‘impossible’ consonant clusters; source of words like familia, person, market, military, arena, etc.; *specula & cistae in usually hypogeals = main material repository
- Camunic, Valcamonia & Valtellina
- Raetic
- Paleo Sardinian
- North Picene
- Sicanian
“Greece”
- PreGreek substrate
- Minoan
- EteoCretan
- Cypro-Minoan
- Lemnian
“Cyprus”
- EteoCypriot
“Serbia”
- Vinca language?
“Turkey”
- Hattic
- Urartrian
“Syria”
- Hurrian
“Iraq”
- Lullubi
“Iran”
- Sumerian
- Elamite
“Pakistan”
- Indus
“India”
- Nihali
- Mil/Dravidian
- Burushaki
“Nepal”
- Kusunda
“Sri Lanka”
- Veddah
BOUSTROPHEDONS
- common in Ancient Greece, but less & less in Hellenistic period
- Etruscan
