Long range linguistics and the Borean language super-super-family
The long-range linguists have a promo piece in the Christian Science Monitor, where they argue for all sorts of deep linguistic history stuff, including the "Borean" language family:
Very tentatively, EHL has grouped the world's languages into three super-superfamilies corresponding to these migrations: those that correspond with the coastal route, which include Papuan languages; those that correspond with the land route out of Africa, descendants of Borean, the best reconstructed; and the "click" languages spoken by the San, or "Bushmen," of southern Africa. Scientists think that the San most resemble the first modern humans. Their language, almost unique in its use of click sounds that perhaps other early languages lost, may best conserve traces of proto-sapiens.
Recently, EHL further refined its hypothesis. How could the 16,000-year-old Borean have engendered the lion's share of Eurasian, North African, and American languages? Some 20,000 years ago, at the peak of the last ice age, the world lost much of its linguistic diversity, they argue. Advancing glaciers pushed humanity south, mashing linguistic groups together. As in later periods of human history – like now – only a few languages emerged from that mixing. Borean, they say, was one of them.
Needless to say, this stuff is highly controversial, and it's good to see the article mention a few of the problems:
But critics look at etymologies like these and see only problems. They're too loose with meanings and sounds, they say. And too many alternate explanations exist: Maybe the word was borrowed from one language and spread to the others. Perhaps it's onomatopoetic, a word that sounds like what it is. ("Cock-a-doodle-doo" is an onomatopoetic word that appears in similar form in many languages, but that doesn't prove relation.) Finally, the shorter the word – in some of the languages, just one syllable rather than two or three – the greater the possibility of a chance match.
Replace the term "critics" with the phrase "the vast majority of linguists" and that paragraph pretty much covers it. Hmm.. if only it were possible to test these claims of deep linguistic stability properly...