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Re: Contemporaneous protolanguages

From:Rob Haden <magwich78@...>
Date:Friday, September 24, 2004, 20:10
On Fri, 24 Sep 2004 14:20:27 -0400, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:

>Suppose you could go back in time to when Proto-Indo-European >was spoken in the Caucasus or wherever we think it was these days. >Would a quick trip down to the Middle East find a culture of people >speaking Proto-Afroasiatic at the same time? And what would the >people in Eastern Asia be speaking at this point? > >Presumably there wouldn't be anyone at all in the Americas yet . . .
The broad range for Proto-Indo-European's existence is between 6000 and 4000 B.C. At this time, Proto-Afroasiatic would have already broken up into Proto-Semitic and Proto-Hamitic, at least. I have no clue about Eastern Asia or the Americas, but there would have been people in the latter for several thousand years, at least. - Rob