Linguistic homeland

Homelands of major language families

Western and central Eurasia

Indo-European

The identification of the Proto-Indo-European homeland has been debated for centuries, but the steppe hypothesis is now widely accepted, placing it in the Pontic–Caspian steppe in the late 5th millennium BCE. The leading alternative is the Anatolian hypothesis, proposing a homeland in Anatolia in the early 7th millennium BCE.

Caucasian

The unrelated Kartvelian, Northwest Caucasian (Abkhaz-Adygean) and Northeast Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestanian) language families are presumed to be indigenous to the Caucasus. There is extensive evidence for contact between the Caucasian languages, especially Proto-Kartvelian, and Proto-Indo-European, indicating that they were spoken in close proximity at least three to four thousand years ago.

Dravidian

Although Dravidian languages are now concentrated in southern India, isolated pockets further north, placenames and substrate influences on Indo-Aryan languages indicate that they were once spoken more widely across the Indian subcontinent. Reconstructed Proto-Dravidian terms for flora and fauna support the idea that Dravidian is indigenous to India. Proponents of a migration from the northwest cite the location of Brahui, a hypothesized connection to the undeciphered Indus script, and claims of a link to Elamite.

Turkic

Turkic languages are today spoken across an area stretching from northwest China to the edge of Europe, but Proto-Turkic lexical items about the climate, topography, flora, fauna and subsistence point to a homeland in the taiga-steppe zone of southern Siberia and Mongolia around the Altai-Sayan region. Early contact with Mongolic languages also points to this area. Genetic studies suggest that most of the expansion of the language family was due to language replacement rather than migration, but have identified shared elements originating from the South Siberia-Mongolia area.

Uralic

Inherited tree names seem to indicate an Uralic homeland to the east of the Ural Mountains. The internal branching of the family suggests an area between the Ob River and Yenisey River. Uralic speakers are not genetically distinguished from their neighbours, but do share a genetic component that is of Siberian origin.

Eastern Eurasia

Japonic

Most scholars believe that Japonic was brought to northern Kyushu from the Korean Peninsula around 700 to 300 BCE by wet-rice farmers of the Yayoi culture, spreading from there throughout the Japanese archipelago and somewhat later to the Ryukyu Islands. There is fragmentary placename evidence that now-extinct Japonic languages were still spoken in central and southern parts of the Korean peninsula several centuries later.

Koreanic

All modern Koreanic varieties are descended from the language of Unified Silla, which ruled the southern two-thirds of the Korean peninsula between the 7th and 10th centuries. Evidence for the earlier linguistic history of the peninsula is extremely sparse. The orthodox view among Korean social historians is that the Korean people migrated to the peninsula from the north, but no archaeological evidence of such a migration has been found.

Sino-Tibetan

The reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than for other major families, so its higher-level structure and time depth remain unclear. Proposed homelands and periods include: the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River about 4–8 kya, associated with the hypothesis of a top-level branching between Chinese and the rest (most likely); southwestern Sichuan around 9 kya, associated with the hypothesis that Chinese and Tibetan form a subbranch; Northeast India (the area of maximal diversity) 9–10 kya.

Hmong–Mien

The most likely homeland of the Hmong–Mien languages is in Southern China between the Yangtze and Mekong rivers, but speakers of these languages may have migrated from Central China as a result of the expansion of the Han Chinese.

Kra–Dai

Most scholars locate the homeland of the Kra–Dai languages in Southern China, possibly coastal Fujian or Guangdong.

Austroasiatic

Austroasiatic is widely held to be the oldest family in mainland Southeast Asia, with its current discontinuous distribution resulting from the later arrival of other families. The various branches share a great deal of vocabulary concerning rice cultivation, but few related to metals. Identification of the homeland of the family has been hampered by the lack of progress on its branching. The main proposals are Northern India (favoured by those who assume an early branching of Munda), Southeast Asia (the area of maximal diversity; most likely) and southern China (based on claimed loanwords in Chinese).

Austronesian

The homeland of the Austronesian languages is widely accepted by linguists to be Taiwan, since nine of its ten branches are found there, with all Austronesian languages found outside Taiwan belonging to the remaining Malayo-Polynesian branch.

North America

Eskimo–Aleut

The Eskimo–Aleut languages originated in the region of the Bering Strait or Southwest Alaska.

Na-Dené and Yeniseian

The Dené–Yeniseian hypothesis proposes that the Na-Dené languages of North America and the Yeniseian languages of Central Siberia share a common ancestor. Suggested homelands for this family include Central or West Asia, Siberia, or Beringia, but there is currently not enough evidence to resolve the question.

Algic

The Algic languages are distributed from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic coast of North America. It is suggested that Proto-Algic was spoken on the Columbia Plateau. From there, pre-Wiyot and pre-Yurok speakers moved southwest to the North Coast of California, while the pre-Proto-Algonquian speakers moved to the Great Plains, which was the center of dispersal of the Algonquian languages.

Uto-Aztecan

Some authorities on the history of the Uto-Aztecan language family place the Proto-Uto-Aztecan homeland in the border region between the USA and Mexico, namely the upland regions of Arizona and New Mexico and the adjacent areas of the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua, roughly corresponding to the Sonoran Desert. The proto-language would have been spoken by foragers, about 5,000 years ago. Hill (2001) proposes instead a homeland further south, making the assumed speakers of Proto-Uto-Aztecan maize cultivators in Mesoamerica, who were gradually pushed north, bringing maize cultivation with them, during the period of roughly 4,500 to 3,000 years ago, the geographic diffusion of speakers corresponding to the breakup of linguistic unity.

South America

Tupian

Proto-Tupian, the reconstructed common ancestor of the Tupian languages of South America, was probably spoken in the region between the Guaporé and Aripuanã rivers, around 5,000 years ago.

Africa and Middle East

Afroasiatic

As Semitic is the only branch of Afroasiatic found outside Africa, northeast Africa is considered the most likely location of the Afroasiatic homeland. An alternative theory, based on lexical comparisons with Indo-European, proposes a Neolithic expansion from the Middle East. Proto-Afroasiatic is estimated to have begun to break up in the 8th millennium BCE. Proto-Semitic is thought to have been spoken in the Near East between 4400 and 7400 BCE, with Akkadian representing its earliest known branch.

Niger–Congo

Although the membership and subgrouping of the Niger–Congo remains unsettled, the widely-accepted core of the group includes over 1000 languages spoken from West Africa through most of Southern Africa. The homeland is thought to have been somewhere in the savanna belt of West Africa, with the Bantu expansion through the equatorial rainforests of Central Africa beginning around 3000 BCE.

Mande

Valentin Vydrin concluded that "the Mande homeland at the second half of the 4th millennium BC was located in Southern Sahara, somewhere to the North of 16° or even 18° of Northern latitude and between 3° and 12° of Western longitude." That is now Mauritania and/or southern Western Sahara.

Nilo-Saharan

The validity of the Nilo-Saharan family remains controversial. Proponents of the family view the border area between Chad, Sudan, and the Central African Republic as a likely candidate for its homeland from around the start of the Holocene.

Central Sudanic

The original homeland of Central Sudanic speakers is likely somewhere in the Bahr el Ghazal region.

Khoe–Kwadi

The homeland of Khoe–Kwadi was likely the middle Zambezi Valley over 2,000 years ago.

Australia

Pama–Nyungan

The Gulf Plains, located in the Northern Territory and Queensland, are the likely origin of the Pama–Nyungan languages.