Borean languages

Borean (also Boreal or Boralean) is a hypothetical (i.e. proposed) linguistic macrofamily that encompasses almost all language families worldwide except those native to sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, New Guinea and the Andaman Islands. It is considered a fringe theory within mainstream linguistics, relying heavily on the discredited mass comparison method to derive genetic relationships. Borean proposes 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 that are native to the Northern Hemisphere. Two distinct models of Borean exist: that of Harold C. Fleming and that of Sergei Starostin.