Language Families: Eurasia (I)

I'm treating Europe and Asia here as a single unit for two reasons. First, in many respects, the differences within various regions of Asia are comparable or even greater than the difference between Europe and adjacent parts of Asia, so that it seems more convenient to think of a single whole called "Eurasia" with various geographic/ecological/cultural regions such as "Europe", "The Middle East", "The Indian Subcontinent", "Southeast Asia", etc. Second, the various language families of Eurasia tend to straddle the geopolitical boundary between Europe and Asia, so it makes sense to examine all of these families together.
Starting with the Middle East, we have spillover of the Semitic branch of Afro-Asiatic as described in the last post. Within this region, two non-Afro-Asiatic language families are well-represented: Turkic, and Indo-European.
The Turkic languages form a group of closely-related languages stretching from Anatolia, through Central Asia, to Siberia and Northeast Asia; the most well-known and most-spoken member is Turkish, but others include Azeri, Turkmen, Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Uyghur (the language of Xinjiang Autonomous Region in western China). Minority Turkic languages are found in parts of southeastern Europe, Iran, Afghanistan, and the Russian Federation. Past civilizations that were Turkic-speaking include the Seljuqs, Bulgars, Avars, and Pechenegs, which menaced the medieval Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire; the Tatars and Khazars, both medieval steppe cultures; and the Timurid and Mughal cultures, which ruled parts of central Asia, Iran, and India during the early modern period. The Huns, a confederation of steppe tribes that invaded the Roman Empire during the 5th century AD, were likely Turkic-speaking as well, though probably also included non-Turkic members.
The Indo-European languages are found throughout most of Europe, into the Caucasus region, and from there through Iran, Afghanistan, and into the northern half of the Indian Subcontinent. There are nine extant subfamilies of Indo-European: Indo-Iranian, which includes the Indo-Aryan languages Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Panjabi, Nepalese, Sinhalese, and others, as well as the Iranian languages Persian, Tajik, Pashto, Kurdish, Baluchi, and Ossetian; the Armenian language, which forms its own independent branch within Indo-European; the Greek language, also an independent branch which once included Ancient Greek, Macedonian, and others; the Albanian language, a third independent branch, which may have included Classical-era Balkan languages such as Illyrian, Thracian, and Dacian; the Slavic languages, found in eastern Europe and extending into large areas of northern Asia, and including Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian, among others; the Baltic languages, which today include only Latvian and Lithuanian; the Germanic languages of northern Europe, including German, English, Dutch, Swedish, and Icelandic, among others; the Italic languages, once represented by Latin and ancient neighboring languages such as Oscan and Umbrian, but today represented by the Latin-descended Romance languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian, and Catalan; and finally the Celtic languages, today represented by Irish and Scots Gaelic, Welsh, and the Breton language of France. Many well-known cultures of antiquity spoke Indo-European languages: the Britons, Gauls, Celtiberians, and Galatians spoke Celtic languages, while the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, and Norse spoke Germanic languages; the ancient Trojans spoke a Phrygian language, an extinct branch of Indo-European probably closest to Armenian; the language of the bronze-age Hittite civilization belonged to the most divergent branch of Indo-European, Anatolian (now extinct); while ancient West Asian cultures such as the Mitanni, the Khwarezmians, the Bactrians, the Scythians, the Alans, the Parthians, and the Medes, spoke Indo-Iranian languages. The 1st-millennium AD Tocharian culture of the Tarim basin in northwestern China was also Indo-European speaking.
Several Indo-European languages have religious importance. Sanskrit, an ancient Indo-Iranian language, is the sacred language of Hinduism and its scriptures, while the Indo-Iranian Pali language was the first (and in many communities, still principal) language of the Buddhist scriptures; likewise, Jain scriptures are found in a variety of Indo-Iranian languages, including the ancient Prakrits languages which split from Sanskrit, and the modern Panjabi language is the sacred language of Sikhism. The Zoroastrian scriptures were first set down in the Indo-Iranian language Avestan, and the majority of the Bábí and Bahá'í scriptures were revealed in the Indo-Iranian Persian language. Outside of the Indo-Iranian branch, Ancient Greek was one of the earliest liturgical languages of Christianity, soon followed by Latin; Latin still serves as the liturgical language of the Roman Catholic Church, while Greek, the Slavic language known as Old Church Slavonic, and Armenian, are languages of Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
Within Europe, particularly in pre-Christian times, a number of non-Indo-European languages were found. These likely included the so-called "Pelasgian" language(s) of pre-Hellenic Greece and Crete (including probably the Minoan language) though some linguists interpret the Pelasgian languages as simply non-Greek Indo-European tongues. Also present was a small language family called "Tyrsenian" or "Tyrrhenian", which may have united the Lemnian language of the Aegian, the pre-Roman Etruscan language of central Italy, and the Rhaetic language of the Alps. In Britain, the ancient Pictish language is often considered to be a non-Indo-European language that survived the initial Celtic migrations to the island, but others have interpreted Pictish as Celtic. The pre-Roman Elymian and Sicani languages of Sicily are also often considered non-Indo-European. In the Iberian peninsula, several non-Indo-European languages were spoken before the Roman conquest, including Tartessian, Iberian, and Aquitanian. Not much is known of the first two groups, but the Aquitanian language is widely considered to be the ancestor, or at least a relative of the ancestor, of the modern Basque language, the only surviving pre-Indo-European language in Europe. Basque has proven to be an enigma within the linguistic community. It has been classified as an isolate - that is, no genetic relationships with any known languages or language families have yet been demonstrated. However, hypotheses abound, with some of the most well-received ones including links to languages spoken in the Caucasus mountains, thousands of miles to the east, though this has yet to be demonstrated conclusively.
Three ancient languages spoken in the Middle East and India deserve mention here. One is the Sumerian language, the first attested language with a writing system anywhere in the world. Like Basque, Sumerian is classified as a language isolate. Many hypotheses have attempted to link Sumerian with virtually every language family in Eurasia, but none of these hypotheses has withstood careful scrutiny. Another Middle Eastern language generally classified as an isolate is the Elamite language of pre-Persian Iran; as with Sumerian, linguists have sought relatives of Elamite among various Eurasian languages, but equally without success, although a link to the Dravidian languages of southern India has gained the most attention. Finally, the language of the enigmatic Indus Valley Civilization is also considered an isolate; however, as the writing system used by this culture has not been deciphered yet, no definite conclusions can be made. Several linguists have conjectured that the Indus Valley language was an early Indo-Iranian language akin to Sanskrit, or that it may represent a member of the Austro-Asiatic languages (today found mostly in Southeast Asia) but most have withheld analysis until the script can be deciphered.
In the area of the Caucasus mountains, three small language families can be found: Northwest Caucasian, Northeast Caucasian, and South Caucasian (often called Kartvelian). The Northwest Caucasian family includes such languages as Circassian, Adyghe, and Abkhaz, all minority languages within the Russian Federation or Georgia; the Northeast Caucasian languages include Ingush and Chechen, which have their own autonomous republics within the Russian Federation, and many languages within the Russian republic of Dagestan, including Lak, Darga, Khinalug, the Andi languages, the Tsez langauges, and the Lezgic languages; and the South Caucasian or Kartvelian family includes, as its principal member, Georgian, the language of the Republic of Georgia, as well as several minority languages of Georgia and Turkey. Georgian also serves as the liturgical language of the Georgian Orthodox Church. Two languages of the ancient Middle East, Hurrian and Urartian, have recently been classified as older members of the Northwest Caucasian language family.
Scattered through central and northeastern Europe and into northwestern Asia can be found the Uralic languages. The principal member of the family is Hungarian, spoken in central Europe surrounded by Indo-European languages; the other two Uralic languages with national status are Finnish and Estonian, spoken to the east of the Baltic Sea. The minority Sami languages of Scandinavia, formerly known as Lappish, are also Uralic, and are usually classified in a Finnic branch along with Finnish and Estonian, and various minority languages of northwestern Russia such as Karelian, Votic, and Ingrian. Hungarian, as well as two languages of western Siberia, Khanty and Mansi, are classified together in the Ugric branch of Uralic, while the Samoyed languages of the Arctic coast of Siberia are considered the most divergent branch of Uralic. Other Uralic languages, spoken in the upper Volga river basin and the Ural mountains, include Komi, Mordvin, Udmurt, Mari, and Erzhya, which are generally classified with Finnic. A small language group called Yukaghir, spoken in a remote area of northeastern Siberia and the Arctic coast, has also been connected to Uralic by some linguists, but this has not yet been widely accepted.
Moving further across central Asia, we find the small Mongolic language family, centered on Mongolia with outliers in the Caspian Sea region and in parts of the Hindu Kush mountains. The family includes the Classical Mongolian language - that of Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire - as well as Modern Mongolian, Buryat, the Kalmyk language of southwestern Russia, and the Moghol language of Afghanistan, among others.
Spreading east from Mongolia through northeastern China and into eastern and northeastern Siberia are the Tungusic languages (also known as Manchu-Tungus). Historically, Manchu was the principal language of the family, being the language of the Manchurian people and of the ruling family of the Qing dynasty, China's last imperial rulers. Modern Tungusic languages are found in scattered parts of northern China and eastern regions of the Russian Federation. The family includes such languages as Evenki, Oroqen, Nanai, Udege, and Xibe. The language of China's 12th-13th century Jin Dynasty, Jurchen, was also a Tungusic language.
The language families Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic, are considered by a large number of linguistics to belong together in a family known as Altaic; evidence for this grouping includes similarities in morphology between the three language families, as well as features such as vowel harmony and lack of gender in nouns. Cognates between the three families have been proposed as well. However, many linguists have interpreted the similarities between the supposed Altaic languages as due to areal contact, rather than shared descent. As the evidence for Altaic has not been completely accepted by the linguistic community as yet, it remains, for the time being, a (plausible) hypothesis.