Here's a series of maps of the world's language famiies:
Map Kernow said: Merritt Ruhlen in his book The Origin of Language, posit a relationship between Basque and languages as disparate as Georgian (Kartvelian), Ket (an obscure, nearly extinct language belonging to a "Yeniseian" language group, because its speakers live along the Yenisei river in Central Siberia), Navajo, and Chinese!
IIRC, Dene-Caucasian includes the Northern (non-Kartvelian) Caucasian languages. Kartvelian may be related to Afro-Asiatic and Nostratic.
By the way, Ruhlen was a student of the late Joseph H. Greenberg, IMHO one of the greatest linguists of the 20th century, if not of all time
Totally agree!
I consider the worldwide etymologies in Ruhlen to be utterly fascinating.
Thanks, I stand corrected. It is indeed the North Caucasian languages I should have referred to, including in my discussion of languages which may eventually be shown to be affiliated to Basque.
On the other hand, fellow Greenberg fan, remember Greenberg considered and ultimately rejected a relationship between Kartvelian and what he called "Eurasiatic" (or Nostratic), or for that matter, between Eurasiatic and Afro-Asiatic (including Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, Kabyle, Hausa, etc.). :)