Proto-Euphratean language
| Proto-Euphratean | |
|---|---|
| Region | southern Iraq |
| Ethnicity | Samarra culture? |
| Era | Early Ubaid period (5500-4800 BCE) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | None (mis) |
| Glottolog | None |
Proto-Euphratean is a hypothetical unclassified language or languages which was considered by some Assyriologists (such as Samuel Noah Kramer) to be the substratum language of the people who introduced farming into Southern Iraq in the Early Ubaid period (5300–4700 BC).
Igor Dyakonov and Vladislav Ardzinba identified these hypothetical languages with the Samarran culture.[1]
Benno Landsberger and other Assyriologists argued that by examining the structure of Sumerian names of occupations, as well as toponyms and hydronyms, one can suggest that there was once an earlier group of people in the region who spoke an entirely different language, often referred to as Proto-Euphratean. Terms for "farmer" (engar), "smith" (simug), "carpenter" (nangar), and "date" (the fruit, sulumb) do not appear to have a Sumerian or Semitic origin.
Dyakonov and Ardzinba proposed a different term, "banana languages", based on a characteristic feature of multiple personal names attested in Sumerian texts, namely reduplication of syllables (as in the English word banana): Inanna, Zababa, Chuwawa/Humbaba, Bunene, Pazuzu, etc found in Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian and Babylonian texts. The same feature was attested in some other unclassified languages, including Minoan. The same feature is allegedly attested by several names of Hyksos rulers: although the Hyksos tribes were Semitic Canaanites, some of their names, like Bnon, Apophis, etc. were apparently non-Semitic in origin.[2]
Rubio challenged the substratum hypothesis, arguing that there is evidence of borrowing from more than one language. This theory is now predominant in the field (Piotr Michalowski, Gerd Steiner, etc.).
A related proposal by Gordon Whittaker[3] is that the language of the proto-literary texts from the Late Uruk period (c. 3350–3100 BC) is an early Indo-European language that he terms "Euphratic", although this does not have mainstream support.
Péter Révész proposes that the Euphratic language belongs to the “Western Ugric” family—a hypothetical subgroup of Ugric languages that also includes Hungarian, as well as Minoan and Hattic (which aren't even usually considered to be Uralic)—and that the Sumerian language emerged as a result of contact between Euphratic and a Dravidian language. This theory is criticized and is not widely accepted in the scientific community. Although it is likely that Sumerian has some words from other languages, the concept of a language having multiple ancestors (excluding pidgins, creoles and some conlangs) is not accepted in linguistics, and Sumerian is considered a language isolate without any known relatives, not a Dravidian-Ugric language. Révész’s methodology is based on comparing Sumerian words with their proposed relatives in Greek and Uralic languages, such as Finnish or Hungarian, while disregarding established, scientifically accepted etymologies of those words that do not involve Sumerian.[4] The theory of the Ugric Euphratic language is related to theories about Sumerian origin of Hungarians, which are regarded as pseudoscience.
References
- ^ История древнего Востока, т.2. М. 1988. (in Russian: History of Ancient Orient, Vol. 2. Moscow 1988. Published by the Soviet Academy of Science), chapter III.
- ^ История древнего Востока, т.2. М. 1988. (in Russian: History of Ancient Orient, Vol. 2. Moscow 1988. Published by the Soviet Academy of Science), p. 229.
- ^ Whittaker, Gordon (2008). "The Case for Euphratic" (PDF). Bulletin of the Georgian National Academy of Sciences. 2 (3). Tbilisi: 156–168. Retrieved 11 December 2012.
- ^ Skryptorium (2026-03-13). Prawdziwi potomkowie Sumerów [The true descendants of the Sumerians] (in Polish). Retrieved 2026-03-21 – via YouTube.
Literature
- Rubio, Gonzalo (January 1999). "On the Alleged "Pre-Sumerian Substratum"". Journal of Cuneiform Studies. 51 (1): 1–16. doi:10.2307/1359726. JSTOR 1359726. S2CID 163985956.fix
- Vanseveren, Sylvia. "A "New" Ancient Indo-European Language? On Assumed Linguistic Contacts between Sumerian and Indo-European "Euphratic"". In: The Journal of Indo-European Studies (JIES). Vol. 36, Nº. 3-4 (FALL/WINTER), 2008: pp. 371-382. ISSN 0092-2323.