What is "paleolinguistics"

n. 1 The study of the distant human past by linguistic means. 2 The study of prehistoric languages using linguistic evidence alone to try to reconstruct them.

Paleolinguistics is a term used by some linguists for the study of the distant human past by linguistic means. For most historical linguists there is no separate field of paleolinguistics. Those who use the term are generally advocates of hypotheses not generally accepted by mainstream historical linguists, a group colloquially referred to as "long-rangers".