Region Northeastern Anatolia Era Bronze Age ISO 639-3 zsk | Ethnicity Kaskians Language family unclassified Linguist list zsk | |
Kaskian (Kaskean) was a non-Indo-European language of the Kaskians of northeastern Bronze Age Anatolia, in the mountains along the Black Sea coast.
It is sometimes suspected that Kaskian was related to the pre-Hittite Hattic language, based on toponyms and personal names. There may also be connections to the Northwest Caucasian languages; the name Kaskian may be cognate with an old name for Circassia, and the name of one of the tribes in the Kaskian confederation, the Abešla, may be cognate with the endonym of the Abkhaz people and some Circassian people, suggesting the Kaskians proper and Abeshla might have been the ancestors of the Circassians and other Caucasian peoples. It has also been conjectured that Kaskian might belong to the Zan family of languages, and have affinities to Megrelian or Laz.