Long Ranger update ...

People who deal with linguistic prehistory very far over the horizon are known as 'long rangers' — I've often heard it used derisively but they've embraced the term. The NYT article from yesterday gets into that territory with Basque substrates in Britain and such. The long rangers have their own groups and discussion lists of course (see here, for the clearest example) If you join the Yahoo group "Mother Tongue Long Ranger", word is that you'll see a longish letter by Vitaly Shevoroshkin (University of Michigan) sketching some of the history of proposals about pre-IE substrates in Europe. This work posits a (North) Caucasian presence in early Europe and sees Basque as a part of that family. ('Traditional' historical linguists don't buy any genetic relationships with Basque, labeling it an 'isolate'.)