Borean (also Boreal or Boralean) is a hypothetical linguistic macrofamily that encompasses almost all language families worldwide except those native to the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and the Andaman Islands. Its supporters propose that the various languages spoken in Eurasia and adjacent regions have a genealogical relationship, and ultimately descend from languages spoken during the Upper Paleolithic in the millennia following the Last Glacial Maximum. The name Borean is based on the Greek βορέας, and means "northern". This reflects the fact that the group is held to include most language families native to the northern hemisphere. Two distinct models of Borean exist: that of Harold C. Fleming and that of Sergei Starostin.
Fleming's model
The concept is due to Harold C. Fleming (1987), who proposed such a "mega-super-phylum" for the languages of Eurasia, termed Borean or Boreal in Fleming (1991) and later publications. In Fleming's model, Borean includes ten different groups: Afrasian (his term for Afroasiatic), Kartvelian, Dravidian, a group comprising Sumerian, Elamitic, and some other extinct languages of the ancient Near East, Eurasiatic (a proposal of Joseph Greenberg that includes Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic, and several other language families), Macro-Caucasian (a proposal of John Bengtson that includes Basque and Burushaski), Yeniseian, Sino-Tibetan, Na-Dene, and Amerind.
In 2002, Fleming argued that there were not a two large super-phyla distinction between a Nostratic and a Dené–Caucasian taxon among Borean languages, and that the language kinship between its branches is possibly more complex than a Nostratic versus a Dené–Caucasian super-phyla.
However, in 2013, Fleming had changed his view about this issue in a joint article with Stephen L. Zegura, James B. Harrod, John D. Bengtson and Shomarka O.Y. Keita - "The Early Dispersions of Homo Sapiens sapiens and proto-Human from Africa." in Mother Tongue, issue XVIII, p. 143-188, 2013, where he argues that Nostratic and Dene-Caucasian as language phyla within Borean is a hypothesis that is well grounded and convincing.
Fleming writes that his work on Borean is inspired by Joseph Greenberg's exploration of Eurasiatic, and is oriented towards the concept of "valid taxon". He rejects Nostratic, a proposed macrofamily somewhat broader than Eurasiatic, and withholds judgment on Dené–Caucasian, a proposal that would encompass Sino-Tibetan, Yeniseian, Basque, and several other language families and isolates. Fleming calls Borean a "phyletic chain" rather than a super-phylum. He notes that his model of Borean is similar to Morris Swadesh's Vasco-Dene proposal, although he also sees similarities between Vasco-Dene and Dené–Caucasian. He sees Borean as closely associated with the appearance of the Upper Paleolithic in the Levant, Europe, and western Eurasia from 50 thousand to 45 thousand years ago, and observes that it is primarily associated with human populations of Caucasoid and Northern Mongoloid physical appearance, the exceptions being southern India, southern China, southwestern Ethiopia, northern Nigeria, and the Chad Republic.
The phylogenetic composition of Borean (noncommital about higher linkages within the whole) according to Fleming, Bengtson, Zegura, Harrod, and Keita (2013) is as follows: "Borean" (Phyletic Chain) (1) Afrasian (Afroasiatic) c) (2) (strongly different languages between themselves and aberrant in its relationship to the other Borean phyla and language families) Sumerian Elamite Hurro-Urartian Hattian a) (3) Kartvelian b) (4) Dravidian d) (5) Eurasiatic Tyrsenian (including Etruscan) Indo-European Uralic Yukaghir Eskimo–Aleut Chukotko-Kamchatkan (Chukotian) Altaic Turkic Mongolic Tungusic Koreanic Japonic Gilyak (Nivkh) Ainu (?) (tentative inclusion) e) (6) Vasco-Caucasic (Vasco-Caucasian) (based on a John Bengtson proposal) North Caucasian Northeast Caucasian Northwest Caucasian Basque f) (7) Burushaski Yeniseian g) (8) Sino-Tibetan h) (9) Na-Dene i) (10) Amerind (outlined by Joseph Greenberg) (a valid taxon with large contrasts among sub-taxa) Austric (not included in Borean) (Fleming et al. are not sure if it is or not more closely related to Borean, that is, if Borean and Austric have an Austric-Borean common ancestor or if Austric is not closer to Borean than to other major language super-phyla) Austro-Tai Austronesian Kra-Dai (Tai-Kadai, Daic) Hmong-Mien (Miao-Yao) Austroasiatic Ainu (?)