ORIGIN OF HURRO-URARTIAN: Sino-Caucasian, Indo-European, or Altaic?

Author suggests Georgian elements in Greece and Ukraine, common Caucasian lexicon, language interpretation of Maikop and Kura-Araxes cultures

Hurro-Urartian might be Nostratic which was positioned between Indo-European (as a branch separated before Hittite-Luwian) and Altaic while its East Caucasian relations might be explained by the ascribing of Hurrian or rather proto-Hurro-Urartian to Kura-Araxes.

Altaic-related German words represent namely substrate, i. e. basic (not cultural) lexicon which might be inherited from ‘macro-Altaic’ (Y haplogroup C, longhouses) Linear Pottery culture. ‘Hamitic’ (non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic)-related cultural lexicon was possibly accepted from Ertebølle (fishing and swine-herding, reflected in language, while ox may be wild). Pictish as well as several pre-Proto-Germanic substrate words might be Yenisseian-related. Kartvelian and North Caucasian elements might be preserved from Basque (Caucasian, mainly Daghestanian-related) Bell Beaker culture. Hurrian elements in Proto-Germanic are confirmed by genetic link with Cyprys and Aegean influence on the Nordic Bronze Age. Etruscan consonantism is similar to Armenian and Germanic as a result of the substrate influence or preservation of archaic features

Anatolian, Indo-Iranian, and Armenian links of the Etruscan language

The origin of the Greeks language, the first Greek states in Mainland Greece and Troy, and the earliest written records of the Greek language are studied

Main (genealogical) part of the Basque language is North(east) Caucasian. Proto-Basque migration from Caucasus might continue (in several waves?) during the Neolithic period, from the Cardium Pottery/Impresso. The Basques spread in Northwest Europe with the Bell Beakers and R1b male haplogroup. Kura-Araxes/Khirbet-Kerak influence is not excluded

The origin of the Greeks language, the first Greek states in Mainland Greece and Troy, and the earliest written records of the Greek language are studied

What the modern formal comparative linguistics can say about genetic affiliation of the Hurro-Urartian languages. Attribution to the Sino-Caucasian (Dene-Caucasian) macro-family is discussed as the most likely solution. Specific closeness to the Yeniseian language family is also suspected.

The final, slightly revised version of the paper is published in Cuneiform Digital Library Journal 2014:004. I host the present draft because it contains an excursus on the Haspelmath-Tadmor’ “Leipzig-Jakarta wordlist” on p.9-10 (due to its self-dependent nature, the excursus has been excluded from the published paper). I suggest that despite the sound theoretical approach, the actual results of the WOLD project unfortunately do not appear very reliable and the traditional Swadesh wordlist cannot be replaced by the current version of the “Leipzig-Jakarta wordlist”. The paper deals with lexical isoglosses between two ancient Near Eastern languages: Sumerian and Hurrian (Hurro-Urartian); namely several basic terms (like ‘hand’, ‘rain’ and so on) phonetically similar in both languages are discussed. Four possible scenarios are evaluated from the typological, etymological and statistical points of view: (1) chance coincidences; (2) lexical borrowings from Sumerian into Hurro-Urartian or vice versa; (3) genetic relationship between Sumerian and Hurro-Urartian; (4) prehistoric language shift: adoption by a Hurro-Urartian (or closely related) group of the Sumerian language or vice versa. Out of these four, two scenarios — lexical borrowings and genetic relationship — are typologically unlikely. The statistical probability of chance coincidences is low, although formally this explanation cannot be excluded. The fourth scenario — language shift — fits linguistic evidence and does not contradict archaeological data.