Abstract
In this review article we evaluate Theo Vennemann’s provocative theories on the role of
Afroasiatic and Vasconic (e.g. Basque) languages in the pre-historic development of Indo-European
languages in Europe as presented in the volume Europa Vasconica-Europa Semitica, a collection of
27 of Vennemann’s essays. First, Vennemann argues that
after the last ice age most of Central and
Western Europe was inhabited by speakers of Vasconic languages, the only survivor of which is
Basque. These speakers formed
a substrate to the later-arriving Indo-Europeans. The primary
evidence for the presence of Vasconic throughout much of Europe is drawn from the Old European
hydronyms originally identified by Hans Krahe as Indo-European and reanalyzed by Vennemann as
Vasconic. Second, Vennemann maintains that
Afroasiatic speakers colonized coastal regions of
Western and Northern Europe beginning in the fifth millennium BCE. According to his theory, these
speakers formed a superstrate or adstrate in Northern Europe and had a profound impact on the lexical
and structural development of Germanic. In the British Isles the language of these colonizers, which
Vennemann calls ‘‘Semitidic’’ (also ‘‘Atlantic’’),