On The Homelands Of Indo-European And Eurasiatic: Geographic Aspects Of A Lexicostatistical Classification

The matrix of pairwise lexical matches between 106 actual and reconstructed languages belonging to 22 taxa in The Global Lexicostatistical Database was subjected to various dimensionality reduction techniques. The results, combined with the geographic approach, gave rise to a new reconstruction of the dispersal pattern of filial Eurasiatic groups, termed Scenario 2. Unlike the previously outlined Scenario 1, which placed the IE, Uralic and Indo-Uralic homelands in the area east of the Caspian Sea, not far from the presumed common Eurasiatic homeland, Scenario 2 locates the latter in a much more easterly area between Lake Balkhash and the Altai. With regard to proto-IE, Scenario 2 is an extension of Scenario 1 back in time and space, adding a very long initial stretch of the westward expansion of Indo-Hittite across most of western Central Asia. The routes by which the remaining Eurasiatic branches (Uralic, Yukaghir, Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Eskaleut, and Altaic) are supposed to have spread from their last common homeland, on the contrary, are much shorter that those envisaged by Scenario 1. Which of the two scenarios is preferable is hard to say because both refer to relatively late stages of the Eurasiatic macrofamily. The distance separating the place of its origin from that of its split is unknown.