@Innomenatus

2 years ago

For all those who wish to know the "Closest living relatives" of these ancient languages/people, here they are: *Hurro-Urartian*: Possibly the Northeast Caucasian languages/people, more specifically the Nakh languages/peoples, who may have an important component of the Hurro-Urartian tribes. Another possible relative would be Armenian, who constituted a part of the Hurro-Urartian tribes. They are widely believed have a substratum of Urartian. *Kassite*: Most likely Hurro-Urartian and therefore the Nakh languages or Armenian. *Hattic*: Possibly the Abkhazo-Adyghean (Northwest Caucasian) and/or Kartvellian languages/people. It may have been related to the unattested Kaskian language whose name may be cognate with an old names for Circassians, the Čarkas, Kasogi, and Kerket. One of the names of their Abešla may be cognate to the ethnonym of the Abkhaz people. A subdivision of the Kaska might have passed north-eastwards to the Caucasus, where they probably blended with the Proto-Colchian or Zan autochthons resulting in the creation of a Proto-Georgian state called Qulḫa in Urartian, and Colchis/Kolchís in Greek. The little known anthronyms of this state are Greek, Anatolian, Iranian, and possibly Abkhaz. *Elamite*: Possibly the Dravidian peoples or the Lurs/Kurdish people. According to some linguists, the Dravidian languages were brought to India by immigration into India from Elam. In 2019, a study concluded that the Iranian ancestral component in the Indus Valley people was contributed by people related to but distinct from Iranian agriculturalists, lacking the Anatolian farmer-related ancestry which was common in Iranian farmers after 6000 BCE mixed with people related to Indian hunter-gatherers ca. 5400 to 3700 BCE. The existence of Brahui speakers in Pakistan supports said Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis. The Proto-Lurs were believed to be the Elamites themselves, and according to some, the Lurs diverged from the Kurds around 1000 years ago. *Sumero-Akkadian*: Sumerian was almost certainly a language isolate. While Akkadian is technically equidistant to all Semitic languages/peoples, the Aramaic language is the "closest", as it contains an Akkadian substratum. The Modern Assyrians themselves are literally the continuation of the original Akkadian Assyrians, who became linguistically Aramized. *Mitanni Substratum*: The Mitanni elite had likely spoken an Indo-European language, more specifically Indo-Aryan language. They spoke a language very closely related to what we call "Vedic Sanskrit". There are no "closest living relatives" of these people as they are linguistically equidistant to all Modern Indo-Aryans, but the Romani people in Syria (or Domari) or the Lomlar (Armenian Romani) would technically be the closest genetically as they inhabit the same area..

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