Paleolithic Continuity Theory

The framework of PCT is laid out by Alinei in four main assumptions:[4]

1. Continuity is the basic pattern of European prehistory and the basic working hypothesis on the origins of IE languages.
2. Stability and antiquity are general features of languages.
3. The lexicon of natural languages, due to its antiquity, may be "periodized" along the entire course of human evolution.
4. Archaeological frontiers coincide with linguistic frontiers.

The continuity theory draws on a Continuity Model (CM), positing the presence of IE and non-IE peoples and languages in Europe from Paleolithic times and allowing for minor invasions and infiltrations of local scope, mainly during the last three millennia.[6]

Arguing that continuity is "the archeologist's easiest pursuit," Alinei deems this "the easiest working hypothesis," putting the burden of proof on competing hypotheses as long as none provide irrefutable counter-evidence. Alinei also claims linguistic coherence, rigor and productivity in the pursuit of this approach.[4]

Associated with the Paleolithic Continuity Theory (PCT) is the historical reconstruction proposed by Alinei, which suggests that Indo-European speakers were native in Europe since the paleolithic. According to this reconstruction, the differentiation process of languages would have taken an extremely long time; by the end of the Ice Age the Indo-European language family had differentiated into proto Celtic/Italic/Germanic/Slavic/Baltic speakers occupying territories within or close to their traditional homelands. The rate of change accelerated when (Neolithic) social stratification and colonial wars began. Summarizing:[4]

1. The colonial expansion of the Celts started much earlier than La Tène culture and proceeded (generally) from West to East, not vice versa.
2. The Mesolithic cultures of Northern Europe are identified with already differentiated Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and Uralic groups.
3. Scandinavia was colonized by Germanic groups "only" after deglaciation, and was better able to preserve its original character in isolation. Germany, in contrast, suffered fragmentation as a result of the Neolithic appearance of the Linear Pottery culture, and developed a wealth of dialects.
4. The prehistoric distribution of proto-languages akin to Italic was an important factor underlying the current distribution of Romance languages throughout Europe.
5. The Slavic languages originated in the Balkans and became linked with the Neolithic expansion. This group would be especially identified by the Baden culture.[7]

The Paleolithic Continuity hypothesis reverses the Kurgan hypothesis and largely identifies the Indo-Europeans with Gimbutas's "Old Europe."[8] PCT reassigns the Kurgan culture (traditionally considered early Indo-European) to a people of predominantly mixed Uralic and Turkic stock. Alinei argues that the use of borrowed Turkic words in horse terminology, such as qaptï ("to grab with hands and teeth"), yabu ("horse"), yam ("nomadic caravan-tent"), yuntă ("horse" (generic)), aygur ("stallion"), homut ("horse collar") and alaša ("pack horse"), in Samoyedic (Northern and Southern), in some Finno-Ugric languages and Slavic languages, "proves the antiquity of Turkic presence in the European area bordering Asia." He suggests that horse domestication originated with Turkic peoples, offering this as an explanation why horse terminology in the European area bordering Asia and in most of Eastern Europe is rooted in Turkic and not Indo-European vocabulary.[9] He supports this hypothesis by making a tentative linguistic identification of Etruscans as a Uralic, proto-Hungarian people that had already undergone strong proto-Turkic influence in the third millennium BC,[7] when Pontic invasions would have brought this people to the Carpathian Basin. A subsequent migration of Urnfield culture signature around 1250 BC is said to have caused this ethnic group to expand south in a general movement of people. This is equated with the upheaval of the Sea Peoples and the overthrow of an earlier Italic substrate at the onset of the "Etruscan" Villanovan culture.[7]

In introduction to PCT Mario Alinei argues, following Cavalli Sforza, that the distribution of genetic markers largely corresponds to that of languages. He further contends that 80 percent of Europe's human genetic material dates back to the Paleolithic, and cites Bryan Sykes in claiming that only a fifth of European DNA can be traced back to neolithic incomers.[4]

A 2009 study comparing mitochondrial DNA lineages of late hunter-gatherers, early farmers, and modern Europeans found large differences between the three groups. In particular, 82 percent of hunter-gatherers had maternal lineages that are rare in modern central Europeans.[10]

The origin of paternal lineages remains difficult to prove because modern science is unable to extract Y-DNA haplogroups from Paleolithic samples. However, the recent analysis of Arredi, Poloni and Tyler-Smith (2007) suggests that R1b-M269, the most common western European haplogroup, may have entered Europe only in the Neolithic.[11]

Alinei's Origini delle Lingue d’Europa was reviewed favourably in 1996 by Jonathan Morris in Mother Tongue, a journal dedicated to the reconstruction of Paleolithic language, judging Alinei's theory as being

both simpler than its rivals and more powerful in terms of the insights it provides into language in the Meso- and Palaeolithic. While his book contains some flaws I believe that it deserves to be regarded as one of the seminal texts on linguistic archaeology, although given its lamentable lack of citation in English-language circles, it appears that recognition will have to wait until a translation of the original Italian appears.

Morris's review was reprinted as the foreword to the 2000 edition of Alinei's book.[12]

Renzi (1997) sharply criticized Alinei's book, refuting in particular the claim of the presence of Latin and of its different territorial forms in Italy in the 2nd millennium BC. Renzi argues that this theory would subvert firmly established concepts of Romance philology and dialectology, such as the concepts of substratum, vulgar Latin and so on.[13]

Alinei's theory was again critically reviewed by Adiego Lajara (2002):[14]

Although some of Alinei's reflections on linguistic change are very interesting, it should be said that certain conceptions in his work – such as the excessive immobility of languages or the relationship between types of language and progress in the prehistoric lithic industry – are very debatable. Alinei's core theory – continuity from the Palaeolithic – runs into a serious difficulty: it obliges us to deal with words traditionally reconstructed for Indo-European, referring to notions that did not exist in the Palaeolithic as loans, when from the formal standpoint they are indistinguishable from those Alinei sees as being Indo-European in the Palaeolithic period.

• Indo-European substrate hypotheses
• Proto-Indo-European language
• Proto-Indo-Europeans
• Proto-Indo-European Urheimat hypotheses
• Indigenous Aryan Theory
• Regional Continuity Model
• Polygenism

• Adams, Jonathan and Otte, Marcel. "Did Indo-European Languages spread before farming?" Current Anthropology, 40, No. 1. (February, 1999), pp. 73–77.
• Alinei, Mario. "An Alternative Model for the Origins of European Peoples and Languages: the continuity theory". Quaderni di Semantica 21, 2000, pp. 21–50.
• Alinei, Mario (2002). "Towards a Generalized Continuity Model for Uralic and Indo-European Languages" in The Roots of Peoples and languages of Northern Eurasia IV, edited by K. Julku.
• Alinei Mario. "Interdisciplinary and Linguistic Evidence for Palaeolithic Continuity of European, Uralic and Altaic Populations in Eurasia". Quaderni di Semantica, 24, 2, 2003.

• continuitas.org - Principal PCT website
  • Review of Mario Alinei's - Origini delle Lingue d’Europa (Origins of the Languages of Europe) - by Jonathan Morris