CONCLUSION
The oldest protolanguage of Africa (Proto-Nilo-Saharan), and the oldest one of Europe (Proto-Dené-Sino-Caucasian) were contemporaneous with Afroasiatic. (Speculated chronology: 16,000 BC to 9,000 BC?) Some millennia later, the largest language family of Africa (Niger-Congo) and the largest one of Eurasia (Eurasiatic) were also contemporaries. The difference between the younger ones and the older ones is that both of the younger ones had a less complex phonological and morphological structure. The distributional pattern in Africa reveals that Nilo-Saharan was spoken over a contiguous area of North and North-Central Africa which was penetrated and broken up by Niger-Congo. Dené-Sino-Caucasian dominated the Eurasian landmass north of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, including the Karakorum and the Hindu Kush. Eventually Eurasiatic languages like Indo-European, Uralic and Transeurasian displaced the Dené-Sino-Caucasian languages so that only the Basque area, the North Caucasus, the Hunza and Nagar Valleys of Pakistan, and a few remote spots along the banks of the Yenisei River in Siberia remained. Afroasiatic first expanded into North Africa with the Chadic branch which took a northern route through the Sinai peninsula, and encountered Nilo-Saharan on the way. Then the Cushitic branch in the Arabian Peninsula crossed the Bab-el-Mandeb to settle the Horn of Africa. Here also Afroasiatic encountered Nilo-Saharan languages. (Omotic might have arrived before Cushitic). 25
