Göbekli Tepe

[Rin]

Does anyone know what languages were spoken at or close to Göbekli Tepe when it was in operation, or was that too far into the past?

[linguoboy]

Does anyone know what languages were spoken at or close to Göbekli Tepe when it was in operation, or was that too far into the past?

That's way too far back. We don't know what languages were spoken anywhere in Neolithic times.

[dhok]

I have heard a theory that the first Neolithic farmers were likely speakers of Hurro-Urartian languages. But, of course, that's a complete conjecture, based on the fact that Anatolia wasn't Indo-European yet, wasn't Sumerian and didn't have any Semites wandering around yet, and Hurrian IS from the area. But for all we know, they could have been speaking...I dunno...some distant relative of Georgian or Etruscan.

[linguoboy]

I have heard a theory that the first Neolithic farmers were likely speakers of Hurro-Urartian languages. But, of course, that's a complete conjecture, based on the fact that Anatolia wasn't Indo-European yet, wasn't Sumerian and didn't have any Semites wandering around yet, and Hurrian IS from the area. But for all we know, they could have been speaking...I dunno...some distant relative of Georgian or Etruscan.

Or some language with no surviving relatives that was wiped out when the Hurrians expanded. It seems likely to me that Stone Age Anatolia would've looked linguistically a lot like pre-contact Papua New Guinea or Australia.

[Wattmann]

That's pretty much for stone age anything, isn't it?

[Rin]

Thanks, guys.

I looked up Hurro-Urartian languages. They look interesting.