From Africa to Arabia and around the world. Андрей Тихомиров

complexes in the world, Gebekli Tepe (Sanliurfa province), archaeologists have found 11 more large hills created by humans, mounds literally surround structures built about 12 thousand years ago, at a distance of 100 kilometers. A migration hub is also being formed here, from where people begin to move to other regions and form language groups. This is most likely where the so-called nostratic languages are created. Danish linguist X. Pedersen at one time put forward a hypothesis about the genetic connection of the languages of several major families that were considered unrelated. He called these languages "nostratic" (from Lat. noster is ours). The research of the Soviet linguist V. M. Illich-Svitych has shown the scientific validity of combining Indo-European, Semitic-Hamitic, Uralic, Altaic and some languages into a large nostratic macrofamily of languages. This macrofamily was formed in the Upper Paleolithic on the territory of Southwest Asia and adjacent areas. During the retreat of the last Wurm glaciation and climatic warming in the Mesolithic, Nostratic tribes settled over a vast territory of Asia and Europe; they pushed back, and partially assimilated the tribes that lived there earlier. In this historical process, nostratic tribes formed a number of separate areas, where the formation of special language families began. The largest of them, the Indo–European linguistic community began to form first in the region of Central Asia – the archaeological culture of Kelteminar, then on the territory of the Southern Urals, and then in the "Big Steppe" – from the Altai to the Black Sea region.

      As archaeological cultures that could be correlated with the area of the pan-Indo-European cultural complex, scientists call the Khalaf, Ubeid, Chatal-Huyuk cultures in Southwest Asia and the Kuro-Araksin in Transcaucasia. The secondary intermediate ancestral homeland of the Indo-Europeans, according to these scientists, was the Northern Black Sea region, where their settlement dates back to the III millennium BC. To the south of the area of the Indo-European family, the core of the Semitic-Hamitic (Afrasian) language family may have formed. To the north of the Indo-Europeans lived, apparently, the carriers of the Kartvelian proto—language, to the east – the Dravidian proto-language. The ancestral home of the Uralic (Finno-Ugric and Samoyed) Turkic, Mongolian and Tungusic-Manchu languages was probably located on the northeastern periphery. This nostratic macrofamily of languages includes Indo-European, Semitic-Hamitic, or Afrasian, Kartvelian, Uralic, Dravidian, Turkic, Mongolian, Tungus-Manchurian, Chukchi-Kamchatka and possibly Eskimo-Aleut language families. The languages of this huge macro-family are now spoken by over 2/3 of the entire world population.

      The spread of Nostratic languages was probably both through the settlement of ancient people of the modern species, and through contacts between their various tribal groups. There is reason to assume that in southeast Asia, at about the same time, another ancient language macrofamily (or trunk) was formed – the Pacific, the differentiation of which led to the development of Sino—Tibetan, Austroasiatic and Austronesian languages. Other scientists (including many Soviet linguists) believed that the most likely time of the formation of language families are the later periods of history corresponding to the Neolithic (New Stone Age) and the Bronze Age of archaeological periodization (8-2 thousand BC). The formation of the oldest language families at this time was associated with the allocation of mobile, mainly pastoral tribes and their intensive migrations, which intensified the processes of language differentiation and assimilation. It should be noted, however, that the real differences between both points of view are not so great, since the formation of different language families did not occur at the same time and was a very long process.

      Earlier than others, ethnic communities probably formed, speaking languages that are currently preserved among small peoples living on the periphery of the primitive ecumene – the land area inhabited by people (Greek. "eikeo" – to inhabit). These languages are distinguished by a great variety of phonetic composition and grammar, often forming imperceptible transitions between themselves, going back, perhaps, to the era of primitive linguistic continuity. Such languages, which are very difficult to geneologically classify, include the languages of American Indians, "Paleoasiates of Siberia", Australians, Papuans of New Guinea, Bushmen and Hottentots, and some peoples of West Africa already known to us.

      The South Arabian cultural complex was formed on a local substrate and preserved the traditional (North African) direction of cultural ties. At the early stage of the late Neolithic of the Arabian Peninsula (V millennium BC), the disappearance of the East Arabian complex was noted with the transformation of the South Arabian cultural complex towards the "desert Neolithic", showing similarities with the Kapsian industry and the Fayum Neolithic of the Nile Valley and Eastern Sahara. Specific elements already in the VIII thousand BC for the South Arabian Neolithic in the Fayum oasis are recorded only in the V thousand BC . E., which indicates the direction of cultural influences from Arabia towards North Africa. The Post—Neolithic monuments of South Arabia (II-I thousand BC) were synchronous with the culture of the Bronze Age and the early urban civilization of this territory and smoothly transformed into the culture of the historically modern nomadic Bedouin population