Paleolithic Continuity Theory

The Paleolithic Continuity Theory (or PCT, Italian La teoria della continuità), since 2010 relabelled as a "paradigm", as in Paleolithic Continuity Paradigm or PCP), is a hypothesis suggesting that the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) can be traced back to the Upper Paleolithic, several millennia earlier than the Chalcolithic or at the most Neolithic estimates in other scenarios of Proto-Indo-European origins.

As advanced by Mario Alinei in his Origini delle Lingue d’Europa (Origins of the Languages of Europe), published in two volumes in 1996 and 2000, the PCT posits that the advent of Indo-European languages should be linked to the arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe and Asia from Africa in the Upper Paleolithic. Employing "lexical periodisation", Alinei arrives at a timeline deeper than even that of Colin Renfrew's Anatolian hypothesis.

Since 2004, an informal workgroup of scholars who support the Paleolithic Continuity Theory has been held online. Members of the group (referred to as "Scientific Committee" in the website) include linguists Xaverio Ballester (University of Valencia) and Francesco Benozzo (University of Bologna), prehistorian Marcel Otte (Université de Liège) and anthropologist Henry Harpending (University of Utah).

The Paleolithic Continuity Theory is distinctly a minority view as it enjoys very little academic support, serious discussion being limited to a small circle of scholars. It is not listed by Mallory among the proposals for the origins of the Indo-European languages that are widely discussed and considered credible within academia.

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