The most insane language family proposal EVER! 🤯

Last Friday, I sat down with a beverage or two, turned on my camera, and recorded a three-hour breakdown of the Usko-Mediterranean hypothesis. It is a wild proposal 🤯 put forward by scholars with an intriguing past. They attempt to connect Basque and Amazigh with a variety of languages, from Sumerian to Hittite. The authors even suggest that it wasn’t the Greeks who founded Western civilization, but the Usko-Mediterraneans.

Before starting, I briefly familiarized myself with their previous work and consulted a few colleagues for advice on genetics and Amazigh linguistics. Afterward, I tried to condense three hours of raw footage—much of which was just me staring in disbelief at some of the paper's proposals—into a more coherent 45-minute video. I added a few clarifications and extras in the edit, and I hope you’ll enjoy the result, even if it feels a bit disjointed.

Thanks to Piotr Łacina, PhD, via Monika Chaszczewska-Markowska, PhD, for guidance on interpreting the genetic data, and Nafie Bouhaddou for helping me sanity-check the Amazigh content.

Please note that up to about 7 minutes, I am mainly referring to a previous article by the authors from the year 2000. Analysis of the linguistic data starts at approximately 18:00.

Sources:

Arnaiz-Villena, A., Alonso-García, J. (2000). The Usko-Mediterranean languages. In A. Arnaiz-Villena, J. Martínez-Laso, & E. Gómez-Casado (Eds.), Prehistoric Iberia. Springer.

⭐ Arnaiz-Villena, A., Martínez-Laso, J., & Alonso-García, J. (2001). The correlation between languages and genes: The Usko-Mediterranean peoples. Human Immunology, 62(9), 1051–1061.

Risch, N., Piazza, A. & Cavalli-Sforza, L. Dropped genetics paper lacked scientific merit. Nature 415, 115 (2002).

Farrujia de la Rosa, A. J., Pichler, W., Rodrigue, A., & others. (2010). The Libyco-Berber and Latino-Canarian scripts and the colonization of the Canary Islands. African Archaeological Review, 27(1), 13–41.

Pichler, W. (1994). Die Ostinsel-Inschriften Fuerteventuras: Transkription und Lesung. Almogaren, XXIV-XXV(1993-94), 117–220.

Pichler, W. (1995). Neue Ostinsel-Inschriften (latino-kanarische Inschriften) auf Fuerteventura. Almogaren, XXVI, 21–46.

Pichler, Werner. (2003). rupestre.net/tracce/?p=3631

(I appreciate that the video might be a bit janky in places, but that was kind of the idea, so deal with it—or make your own videos, and I'll be the first to subscribe.)